Skulduggery is afoot in tropical paradise. Screen legend Alec Guinness plays an innocent looking vacuum salesman with devious intentions in the film adaptation of the spy novel written by 20th century literary giant Graham Greene. When James Wormold (Guinness) is recruited by the British secret service to be Her Majesty’s eyes and ears in Cuba he does just that and then some. And by then some I mean inflating his own importance to absurd heights. Eventually, Wormold bites off more than he can chew, becoming a “success” due to his lies and causing him to weave even more non-truths that might just get him in boiling hot water. Don’t forget this is just part of the MFA’s ongoing series celebrating movies written for the screen by Garam Greene himself, so if you like what you see then be prepared because there’s a lot more to come.

Our Man in Havana
dir. Carol Reed
1959
111 min