The Quiet American *** (2002, Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser) – Classic Film Review 1221

Director Phillip Noyce’s 2002 thriller stars Oscar-nominated Michael Caine, who is back on top form in this classy and compelling version of Graham Greene’s distinguished novel.

Caine plays Thomas Fowler, an ageing British reporter for the London Times, covering the early stages of the Vietnam War in war-torn 1952 Saigon, who fears he’ll be sent back to England because of his slack and lazy work, filing stories only occasionally and no longer doing field work. Though married, he has a beautiful Vietnamese mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), whom a young American aid worker, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), falls for and offers to wed. The reporter vies with the doctor for the woman’s affections.

Rich, intelligent, satisfying, adult entertainment, it is a must for fans of posh movies. Christopher Doyle’s Vietnam cinematography at Da Nang, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City is a big plus. The interiors were filmed at the Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia. Christopher Hampton’s smooth running screenplay is intelligent and literate and keeps the faith with Greene. The film is produced by Moritz Borman and the much lamented, late, great team of Anthony Mingella and Sydney Pollack.

It remakes writer-producer-director Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1958 movie The Quiet American, which uses half of Graham Greene’s novel, then turns it into a murder-thriller with lots of dialogue and a Communist-bashing ending. In that film’s story, US trader The American (Audie Murphy) comes to Saigon, meets a hard-bitten English reporter (Michael Redgrave), who is living with an Indo-Chinese woman (Giorgia Moll), and then falls for her himself.

[Spoiler alert] Unlike Mankiewicz’s film, Noyce’s version retains Greene’s ending and treatment of Alden Pyle, shaming him for arranging terrorist actions aimed at the French colonial government and the Viet Minh. But the film adds a montage ending with superimposed images of American soldiers from the intervening decades of the Vietnam War.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1221

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