Our Man in Havana is a 1959 British spy comedy film shot in CinemaScope, directed and produced by Carol Reed, and starring Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, Noël Coward and Ernie Kovacs.

[5] In pre-revolutionary Cuba, James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, is recruited by Hawthorne of the British Secret Intelligence Service to be their Havana operative.

At the film's conclusion, rather than telling the truth to the Prime Minister and other military intelligence services, Wormold's commanders (led by Ralph Richardson) agree to fabricate a story claiming his imagined machines had been dismantled.

[8] Fidel Castro visited the film crew on 13 May 1959, while they shot scenes at Havana's Cathedral Square.

I had seen, partly suggested by the name, an untidy, shambling, middle-aged man with worn shoes, who might have bits of string in his pocket, and perhaps the New Statesman under his arm, exuding an air of innocence, defeat and general inefficiency.

[10]Graham Greene later said: My books don’t in fact make good films, and when I write a novel I never think about whether it might adapt to the screen.

As for Our Man in Havana and Brighton Rock, this may sound pretentious, but all that saved them was the fact that I took a close hand in their production.

[10]Sight and Sound magazine later said: Sir Carol Reed, resuming his partnership with Greene after several years, has been given a subject more or less hand-made for him.

He could scarcely go wrong; but it is a little sad, when one looks back to the evenly matched teamwork of The Third Man, to note that the writer now seems more agile than the director.

Sir Carol’s film wins on points, but it is sometimes a near thing; and it is the director’s footwork, his ability to manoeuvre his way through all the shifting moods of the story, which seems to have slowed up with the years.