Film

Our Man in Havana

Name: Our Man in Havana
Genre: Comedy, Thriller
Released: 1960
Cast: Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ernie Kovacs, Noël Coward

Crime

Graham Greene's own dry joke about the spy trade: a broke vacuum-cleaner salesman in pre-revolutionary Havana gets recruited by British intelligence and, having nothing to report, simply invents a network of agents to keep the cheques coming. Carol Reed shoots the farce against real melancholy and menace. For anyone who wants their comedy cynical, their spies incompetent, and their stakes quietly, eventually real.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy satire played with a straight face, where a comic lie slowly curdles into real danger and the humour comes from a decent fraud muddling through.

Skip it if you want brisk, escalating set pieces, since this one ambles through its farce and lets the spy games stay gently amused rather than tense.

What it asks of you: Roughly under two hours at an easy, ambling pace, with a sardonic lightness that rarely turns urgent until its later stretches.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Tailor of Panama2001

Le Carré's own riff on Greene's joke decades later — a con-man tailor spins fake intelligence for a bored MI6 handler, and the farce curdles into something properly dangerous. Pierce Brosnan plays smarm beautifully.

But Nastier and more cynical than Havana; the fun drains out of it faster than you'd like.

The Third Man1949

Same director, same writer's sensibility, a different key entirely — postwar Vienna instead of Havana, and a friendship built on a lie instead of a spy network. Essential Greene-Reed cinema.

But It's a thriller, not a comedy — go in expecting shadows and zither music, not jokes.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb1964

Kubrick's absurdist take on Cold War machinery believing its own nonsense, pushed to nuclear extremes. If Wormold's fake network amuses you, wait till you see what the generals invent.

But Broader, blacker, and considerably more frightening — it wants to make you laugh and then feel sick about it.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Our Man in Havana

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Foreign Correspondent1940

Both send an untrained civilian into the spy trade and mine comedy from how seriously everyone else takes him — Hitchcock's version just happens to be true within the story, and twenty years older.

Hitchcock's prewar spy comedy-thriller, where a bumbling American reporter stumbles into real European espionage two decades before Wormold stumbles into fake espionage. Same delight in amateurs faking competence, played with total conviction.

But It's wartime propaganda underneath the jokes, and some of that period patriotism shows its age.

Kind Hearts and Coronets1949

Ealing's driest, most elegant black comedy, with Alec Guinness playing eight members of the same doomed family. Same appetite for wickedness conducted with perfect manners.

But No spies, no Cold War — this is drawing-room homicide, a different genre entirely.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold1965

The bleak, humourless mirror image — a spy story stripped of every joke Greene left in. Richard Burton at his most exhausted. Shows you what the genre looks like played completely straight.

But Grim and slow by design; if you came for comedy, this will feel like a wet Tuesday.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold poster

Burn After Reading2008

The Coens' own idiots-blunder-into-espionage farce, with a CIA that understands even less than Wormold's handlers do. Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand at their most gloriously stupid.

But Far more violent and cruel to its characters than anything in Havana — the laughs come with real damage.

The Ipcress File1965

Michael Caine's working-class spy grinding through bureaucratic fog and paperwork instead of gadgets — the unglamorous, filing-cabinet side of the trade that Wormold's cover story depends on everyone believing in.

But Plays it largely straight; the wit is drier and the pace slower than Havana's farce.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy2011

A masterclass in institutional rot and self-deception among British intelligence, decades on from Wormold's era — same organisation, same capacity for believing its own fabrications, now deadly serious.

But Demands close attention and multiple viewings; it's puzzle-box cinema, not a light watch.

Charade1963

If you want the same era's appetite for wit, glamour and duplicity but with romance instead of satire, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn trade lies beautifully through 1960s Paris.

But Pure entertainment with none of Greene's political bite — a holiday, not a satire.

F for Fake1973

Wormold invents intelligence reports and gets away with it because everyone wants to believe him; Welles spends ninety minutes asking whether that's basically what all storytelling — including his own — has always done.

Orson Welles' essay-film about a real art forger, told by cinema's greatest liar, blurring documentary and trick until you can't tell which parts are true. A meditation on fabrication as art.

But Not a story in any conventional sense — it's a documentary-collage that argues with itself, which some viewers find maddening rather than dazzling.

In the Loop2009

Both are comedies about invented intelligence reports being taken seriously by people who should know better, and both end somewhere much darker than the jokes promised.

A foul-mouthed modern satire on how a war gets talked into existence by officials who half-believe their own spin. Same target as Havana — bureaucracies swallowing their own fictions — with none of the manners.

But Relentlessly profane and shouty where Havana is understated; the tone is a hand grenade, not a martini.