A nice trip to Cuba in the waning days of Fulgencio Batista was as good an excuse as any for John Cassavetes, Sara Shane, and Raymond Burr to make Affair In Havana. The title is a bit of a misnomer as most of the action takes place in the area in and around Raymond Burr's estate on the northern shore.
The Batista administration was making an effort to attract movie companies to film in Cuba. This same year Errol Flynn did The Big Boodle, also entirely shot on location there. Affair In Havana has a bit more going for it.
Raymond Burr is a paralyzed wealthy industrialist who is married to the beautiful Sara Shane who was crippled in a boating accident. Implied is that a very important love muscle doesn't work also. Without the Code that would be more explicit. So the voluptuous Shane takes her pleasures where she finds them and currently she finds them in jazz pianist John Cassavetes.
Burr knows all about it and he gets Cassavetes to the estate where everything pops.
Color might have been nice for Affair In Havana to emphasize the lush greens of the tropics.
Burr's performance was interesting I could have seen him being wheeled in to that meeting that Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth had with those other business tycoons in The Godfather, Part II.
As for the story, think of W. Somerset Maugham's The Letter and you will know how it comes out.
