Our Man in Havana

Unavailable on DVD in the U.S., this 1959
British noir classic reunites director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene, the
sly duo who gave us The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, also classics. Here,
Alec Guinness plays James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman stationed
in Cuba who is enlisted as a spy for
Queen and country. Concerned that he is going to lose this prized position,
Wormold concocts a story about secret rockets, using vacuum cleaner circuit
diagrams to fool the British Secret Service into believing he’s onto a Russian
missile scheme. Shot entirely in Cuba-Castro’s government was, at the time,
eager to encourage a film that portrayed a corrupt Batista regime.

Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis;
612-822-3030.