The Dryden will screen Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, U.K. 1959, 93 min., 35mm).

This irreverent Cold War spy film was the last in a series of exalted collaborations—including The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949)—between director Carol Reed and author Graham Greene. Though it takes place in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Our Man in Havana was shot on location only two months after the fall of the Batista regime by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement (Castro even paid a visit to the film's set). Here we find a city teeming with excitement and life, which spills over even the film's widescreen frame. Against this extraordinary backdrop, we meet James Wormold (Alec Guinness), a British vacuum cleaner salesman who is recruited to spy for the British intelligence agency by a man named Hawthorne (Noël Coward). More keen on benefiting himself than advancing his country's foreign interests, Wormold puts together a bogus cell of agents and farcical plans for a rocket launch pad consisting of vacuum cleaner parts to convince his employers that he is indeed their man. MI6 eventually provides him with Beatrice (Maureen O'Hara): an adept administrator who comes to harbor suspicion regarding Wormold's abilities. Coward and Greene's Havana is marked by paradox, their characters by ambivalence and a decidedly comic ineptitude. For Greene in particular, Havana at this time embodied the absurdities of the Cold War, leading him to wonder, "Who can accept the survival of Western capitalism as a great cause?"

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2016-Mar-21]