User reviews

The Quiet American has a lot to live up to, because it is adapted from possibly the best book that Graham Greene ever wrote. However, it is a very well made and literate film which manages to make a reasonable stab at living up to the forbidding reputation of its source material.

Audie Murphy gives a career-best performance as the title character, an American living in Vietnam during the French incursion into the country. He believes that he can make a difference by providing funding for arms, but his political and economic beliefs often lead to death and destruction. A British journalist named Fowler (Michael Redgrave) befriends him, but soon their friendship is damaged when the young American has an affair with Fowler's Vietnamese mistress. In the end, Fowler ponders whether to betray the American to his enemies as an act of revenge for what the American has done to his love-life.

The film is powerful, absorbing and well-acted. It perhaps could be criticised for the extraordinarily high amount of dialogue (it's one of those films where if you stop listening for 30 seconds, you'll lose the plot) but that is probably the only true weakness. The themes of betrayal, colonialism, and the wisdom of interfering in the affairs of other nations, are handled thought-provokingly, and the moral dilemma facing the characters at the end are emotionally shattering. Redgrave gives a great performance, conveying the pain of his dilemma with aching conviction.

Audie Murphy is wooden in his portrayal of the American and, in a twist to the novel, is the hero of the piece. Not quite what Greene had in mind but relevant to events in the USA during the McCarthy era when this film was made (1958).

Phuong has not been given the importance she demands in the novel. The way in which she is 'colonised' by first Fowler and then the American (Pyle in the novel, but not named in this film) is a comment on the way in which the foreign landscape is depicted and also on how the country has been colonised. Despite this she is also manipulative.

However, having said some negative things about this production of The Quiet American, it is a MUST view for the portrayal of tensions in the cold war era and the USA's twist to events as they unfold. Remember that Audie Murphy and Joseph L. Mankiewicz testified for HUAC against their fellow actors and colleagues at the height of McCarthyism.

This film is totally relevant to events unfolding today and for all those interested in the effects of colonialism and the rise of the Vietnam War. What is interesting about this film is the different take on events portrayed in Greene's superb novel, unfortunately, some of which were omitted or subverted in the 1958 film.

This film should be followed by the Philip Noyce version of The Quiet American (2001) with Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler and Brendan Fraser as Pyle (the American in the Mankiewicz version). There is a good opportunity to contrast and compare the two versions which are very different, given that the Noyce Quiet American is closer to the novel.

I would also recommend for light relief that viewers watch the Mash Season 2 TV series in which we see Colonel Flag of the CIA raising a few loud laughs.

It's 1952 Vietnam. The French are helping the locals fight the communist insurgents. They find the dead body of Alden Pyle (Audie Murphy). Thomas Fowler (Michael Redgrave) sees it but doesn't tell young Vietnamese girl Phuong (Giorgia Moll) who is desperately waiting for Alden. Inspector Vigot (Claude Dauphin) questions Fowler who tells him that Pyle was a quiet American. There was a love triangle between Phuong, world-weary Brit Fowler and wide-eyed do-gooder Pyle from a private aid organization. The movie is told in flashback as Pyle and Fowler meet a few months before. Pyle is importing plastics to replace production in China. Pyle wants to marry Phuong making Fowler jealous.

There is no excuse for changing the Graham Greene novel 180 degrees. They should have the decency to change the title although it's understandable in the Hollywood red scare era. Also it's still a time when white people play Hollywood lead ethnic characters. On the other hand, there are some good qualities. Redgrave is doing solid work. He gets that perfect cynicism. It also has some scenes in Vietnam which is very rare at the time. This has some of the murky morality but it turns that murkiness on its head. This has some good stuff but it is not Graham Greene's book.

A love triangle played out in early 50s Saigon (prior to independence). A British reporter gets to know a younger American of seemingly innocent intent--the American wants the British reporter's mistress for a wife.

There were at least 2 versions of this book made into films this one (1958) and a later one with Michaeal Caine.

This movie has a plot twist not in the book that makes it in a way a bit more interesting but not nearly as realistic. Most viewers would probably disagree. I thought at first I had forgotten the story from the book.

Greene's best novels are about as good as they get....a lot of the lines in the movie are lifted from the book--which makes for a very good quality script.

Recommend...need to see the Caine version....to compare. Have my doubts about it being better as it was made in the modern PC era.

Graham Greene drew upon his experience as a war reporter in French Indochina to write his novel on which this film is based. He was severely criticised to put it mildly for supposed anti-Americanism in the character of Alden Pyle, an undercover CIA agent. Following the Hollywood blacklistings, 'politics' dictated that Joseph L. Mankiewicz's version should show this 'quiet American' as a character motivated by altruism rather than by a political agenda. However the notion that America is a beacon of morality is no less laughable now than it was then. On the films release Mankiewicz was in turn attacked by Europeans for betraying the books intentions and making it pro-American. Graham Greene of course disowned the film entirely. In this the American, who has no name, is played by Audie Murphy, far from being a great actor but whose wholesome persona suits the way the part is written and whose sterling War record would presumably improve the films box office potential. As Phuong, the Vietnamese girl loved by both the American and Fowler the journalist, Mankiewicz cast Georgia Moll, an Italian. Her casting has raised a few eyebrows and would now be considered by the PC brigade to be decidedly 'non-inclusive'. She is however both touching and appealing in the role. Mention must be made of Claude Dauphin as Inspector Vigo whose scenes with Fowler are splendid. Fowler is played by Michael Redgrave and it is his sensitive and powerful performance that carries the day and provides the films driving force. Mankiewicz himself was disappointed with the finished product and it fared badly. The remake directed by Philip Noyce with Michael Caine as Fowler is more faithful to the novel but I don't think that makes it a better film. Let's face it, Mankiewicz at his worst is in a different class to Noyce and Caine at his best is no match for Redgrave!

The Quiet American (1958)

I think this is an extraordinary film. At the time, Americans didn't like it because it made them look bad, and the writer of the book it is based on, Graham Greene, didn't like it because it changed too much of his anti-American plot. But as a film, whatever its blurring of truth to history, is true about human nature. The credit for this goes not only to Greene, the enormously gifted writer and co-screenwriter, but also to the director, one of the lesser known American masters at telling a romantic story, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also helped with the screenplay.

The two are a perfect match, really, because both are all about subtlety and observation. Greene in particular has a way of bringing up the biggest issues in the most intimate and delicate ways, never grandiose, always psychologically sharp. And that is carried forward here in Vietnam a decade before the American War of the 1960s. The Communists are already fighting in the north, the French are getting ready to abandon the country to the Americans, and a British reporter is the center of our attention, not quite on anyone's side.

There are two key characters, the reporter played with astonishing depth and acumen by Michael Redgrave, and "the American", played toward a caricature by Audie Murphy, with enough twists to his character to avoid over-stereotyping.

Greene's observations of American do-good naiveté are fascinating, and the way this gets mixed (poisoned) with American meddling and military subversion is way ahead of its time. Or is it? It might be simply observant of the facts in 1950s Vietnam. Greene was a reporter himself there then, and after this book was published he was followed by American Intelligence until his death in 1991. One of the brilliant aspects of this movie is how it is not simply a love story, but has a trenchant, disturbing comment to make about world affairs, from the inside.

Still, love intrudes, and the crossed loves of the two men for the same young Vietnamese woman is less clichéd than you might expect. The story is moving without being sentimental. And all of this is layered up with the actual Imperialist/Colonialist facts of the time. The conflicting sides of a war that few really understood (it seems) until twenty years later are here in their full formed germinations. Unlike the Michael Caine version of the same story (from 2002), this one was made before history had unfolded. It's endlessly almost chillingly fascinating, even though Greene's anti-war (and somewhat anti-American) tone was largely removed. The later movie might be closer to the book, but it feels like a movie made about history, not one that predicts it.

There are some scenes here, priceless ones, shot in Vietnam in 1958, the rest is done (with terrific light and set design) in an Italian film studio. Greene was British and the production Italian, but Mankiewicz was American, and fully steeped in American filmmaking and myth making. It's this last aspect that is key--the movie is made to the highest standards of 1940s American melodramas, even having an echo (in terms of light and drama and style) of William Wyler's "The Letter" also set in Southeast Asia. The filming is astonishing--the photography is in the hands of Robert Krasker, who shot "The Third Man" and "Brief Encounter" to give you an idea of the moody richness of his style.

And as a melodrama it comes down to the crumbling personal world of Fowler. At the end, in the busy night streets of a chaotic Saigon, he says, "I wish there was someone to whom I could say I'm sorry." I found it the final moving, beautiful strain of truth and pathos in a very special movie.

Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American", was about a naive and rather dumb CIA operative whose blunders led to tragedy and death in Vietnam following the withdrawal of the French in the 1950s. It is definitely NOT a story that advises a greater American presence in the country and could even be seen as a huge counterpoint to American foreign policy in the 1960s. So what does Hollywood do? They buy the story and change it completely--and in the process that pretty much make it into a film saying the opposite of Greene in his novel!!! Not surprisingly, the author and many others were ticked and ended up hating the film. So, as a retired history teacher, I could not help but automatically hate the film because of its dishonesty. But that isn't the only problem with the movie...it's also very boring and was filled with Asians who aren't really Asian. All in all, you could certainly do better than this turgid little romance.

I loved the Graham Greene novel. I admit I picked it up secretly from my father's library when I was 15. It stayed with me. I knew about the existence of this 1958 version written and directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz but I had never seen it until now, thank you TCM. I had seen the 2002 with a terrific Michael Caine but the film - a more faithful version of Greene's novel according to the critics and it may be true but the 2002 version left me pleased but unmoved while the 1958 version is much more unsettling, in spite of some hard to understand choices by the filmmakers. Audie Murphy plays the quiet American, and he is, very quiet. Good looking a real life American war hero but he is not an actor and here he is sharing the frame with Michael Redgrave. Michael Redgrave! The other oddity is the casting of Italian Actress Giorgia Moll as the Vietnamese girl-in-the-middle. She's lovely but I repeat, she's Italian. No, the power force here is Michael Redgrave, A marvelous, fearless performance and that alone makes The Quiet American an absolute must.

Fascinating and emotive political/drama /thriller set during Vietnam war with intervention of France and US . It boasts a very good cast such as Audie Murphy as the American , Michael Redgrave as Thomas Fowler , Bruce Cabot and Claude Dauphin as Inspector Vigot . It is Saigon set , at the time of Chinese New year 1952 . There was an emperor who ruled by permission of France to whom it belonged and 300 miles to the North of Saigon , both the emperor and the French were fighting a war against a communist army . But at war or in peace Chinese New Year was a time to forgive one's enemies square accountants with one's God and creditors and to rejoice is a world that , for two days , night be considered a happy one . Entertaining as well as taut picture dealing with a central romance along with thrills , political details and warlike deeds about Vietnam versus France conflicts . A young naive American named Alden Pyle (Audie Murphy) and a cynical older British journalist called Fowler (Michael Redgrave) disagree over politics in 1952 Vietnam and over a beautiful young native girl called Phuong (Giorgia Moll) . As a ¨quiet American¨ with dark secrets arrives in Saigon with his own plan to settle country's conflicts . As it's not clear whether Alden Pyle is just what he appears , as he seems to be an innocent young American opposite the older , intelligent Thomas Fowler . Eventually Fowler must confront moral conflicts and the relationship between Pyle and him reaches some problems connected with a Vietnamese General , at the same time the war and a political upheaval take place .

Interesting first rendition of the Graham Greene novel including a love triangle , emotion , wartime events and many other things . The picture relies heavily on the love triangle between the ironical British reporter , his enticing mistress and the strange quiet American , but it doesn't boring , neither tiring and nor dull . Michael Redgrave is very good as a correspondent covering a conflict and finding himself becoming personally involved when he befriends an American who is not all that he seems to and also falling for a beautiful young Vietnamese , a mesmerizing Giorgia Moll . Audie Murphy gives a career-best acting as the title role . The movie has its touching moments found primarily in the superb performances from trio protagonist . The movie received many good reviews at various International Film Festivals , but other places was panned by critics . In fact , in Europe, director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz was savagely attacked for his film's infidelity to the source novel by Graham Greene, not least by Greene himself . The screenplay essentially turns the novel inside-out, so that the blundering "quiet American", whose extreme naiveté causes tragedies . The flick is dedicated to the people of the Republic of Vietnam , to their chosen President and administrators , wishing our appreciation for their help and kindness . The picture contains an adequate and evocative musical score by Mario Nascimbene , including oriental sounds . Furthermore , and atmospheric cinematography in black and white by Robert Krasker . This handsomely mounted flick was well directed by , resulted to be more a killing mystery than the political/drama , being compellingly directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz .

The second version (2002) was realized by Phillip Noyce . The US release of this movie was delayed for more than a year by the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001 . The producers were concerned that it would be seen as anti-American and Miramax decided to release this movie in the United States theatrically . The film ends with newspaper stories written by Thomas Fowler about Vietnam from 1954 to 1966 ; however , the book on which the film was based was published in 1955 , so these are mostly events which happened after the book came out . It was starred by Brendan Fraser , Michael Caine , Do Thi Hai Yen as Phuong , while this last retelling turned to be more faithful to Graham Greene than Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1958 take on Graham Greene novel .

I read the book and saw the 2002 film version. This film is a partial misreading of the book, and the 2002 version is much better. In terms of acting, characterization, and other film elements, this movie does very well, though.

"A young naive American and a cynical older British diplomat disagree over politics in 1952 Vietnam and over a beautiful young native girl. " The Quiet American features Audie Murphy as the role of The American in search of a "thrid force" in Vietnam, Michael Redgrave as Thomas Fowler, a British correspondent covering the Indo-China War, and Giorgia Moll as Phuong, Fowler's mistress. When Fowler and The American end up in a Vietnam guard tower, we are treated to Vietnam's pitch black night and the War's prominent gunfire. They are seated with two Vietnam boys who barley know how to operate a gun. All four of them are huddle together in this small bird's nest, unaware if they'll be alive tomorrow morning.

Wordy. If only Audie Murphy had been allowed to be actually romantic! No-one in this film shows any genuine feelings! (viewed 11/16)

Graham Greene did not have a comfortable vision of the world--or at least of the activities of human beings in the world. While very few movies do justice to books on which they are based, the Quiet American is a chilling forewarning of what the United States would be letting itself in for in the years to come. Murphy, always an appealing figure on the screen but not noted for truly great acting depth and breadth, is ideal for this understated role. A very well done thriller which addresses racism, colonialism, various "economic"isms, all the while focusing on the individual human impacts of high level decision-making. Are we just pawns, forced into just following orders, or do we have the responsibility to take action on the side of what we know to be right, in spite of the personal cost?

Apart the great Michael Redgrave who deserve all regards about pretty good acting in this picture, otherwise probable should be even worst, the 2002 new version is much better, l was hopeful that this previous work will be more close to the novel, so far very disappointed indeed, too much talking, overlong and sometimes even boring and Audie Murphy wasn't able to do this kind of role, westerns is your ground, another weak point is about how the movie approach of the USA's speech, communism isn't good, it's true, the French colonialism wasn't good enough??? according to the movie the correct speech is the third way, sadly movie about bad politics, worth to see Michael Redgrave!!

Resume:

First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

The next thing to do after seeing The Quiet American is to see the version done 44 years later. The novel by Graham Greene is set in French Indo-China in 1952 and this version is prophetic. The other one surely has the advantage of a whole lot of hindsight. This film done in 1958 has a lot of foresight.

I don't know what to make of Audie Murphy's character, it's never brought out, but he seems to be a CIA man. In the novel he's from the Ivy League, but due to Murphy's speech pattern, his character is from Texas. He's bringing in plastic for industrial purposes purportedly, but we see how the 'plastic' is really used.

The political picture of Indo-China in 1952 has the United States already seeing the French won't hold on and they're getting ready to put in their own surrogate in when the French do fall. Murphy is forever talking about a 'third force' who will bring western style democracy.

Murphy also becomes romantically involved with Giorgia Moll who is also the mistress of British newspaper correspondent Michael Redgrave. The rivalry between the two prevents either from acting coherently though Redgrave has a much better idea of what's really happening.

Interestingly enough the United Kingdom was also fighting to hold on in Malaya the same way that the French were trying to hold on to Indo-China next door. The British were far more successful though.

The Quiet American should have been seen by policy makers in Washington through six administrations in America. A lot of valuable lessons could have been learned and a lot of valuable lives might never have been lost.

Personally, I thought this movie never really found its direction. One of the advantages of a novel (this is based on one by Graham Greene) is that it can go in many different directions successfully and work very well because the written word allows for a much fuller depiction of what's happening. If you translate the novel into a movie, though, you're dealing with a more limited medium and it's a lot harder to make multiple story lines work. So - what was this? Part Cold War thriller, part murder mystery, part romance, with various other things thrown in, mixed together and ending up as mush.

There were parts of this that I enjoyed. Generally, I thought that Peter Redgrave as Fowler (a middle aged, jaded British journalist) and Audie Murphy as "The American" put on pretty decent performances, I appreciated the look (somewhat limited but still present) at Vietnamese culture, and I also appreciated the portrayal of the very early years of the Vietnam War, when it was still the French dealing with a Communist insurgency in what was then an integral part of their Empire. It was an interesting look at that aspect of the Cold War. Not really anti-Communist, as one might expect from the era, but somewhat anti-everything. In that sense, the movie took on Fowler's jaded personality. Starting with the American's murder, the story revolves around the search for the killer and I didn't find that part to be particularly interesting. Unfortunately, that's the bulk of the movie. Woefully underused and under-appreciated, I thought, was Giorgia Moll as Phuong, the young Vietnamese girl who becomes a love interest to both Fowler and the American. One wonders why an Italian born actress was cast as a Vietnamese (not a single Asian actress was around in 1958?) but more disappointing was that she had little to do except sip her ever-present milkshakes.

Frankly, I found most of this dreadfully boring. 3/10

I've now seen the two versions of this movie, based on this Graham Greene's novel. Though the 2002 version with Michael Cain and Brendan Fraser is supposed to be more faithful to Green's novel, I much prefer the story that is presented in this 1958 version. On TCM, Ben Mankiewicz said that, for marketing reasons, the story in this version (directed by his uncle) had to be toned down to make it less anti-American than the novel. He also said that Audie Murphy was probably chosen for the title role because he was a well-known actor-war hero (a Congressional Metal of Honor winner who played himself in the autobiographical war movie, To Hell and Back.) Though this wide-screen, black-and-white movie about two men in far-off place, called Vietnam, then failed at the box office, the locale of its story would come back to haunt us for decades to come.

Neither Audie Murphy nor Brendan Fraser stand out as actors that we tend to think of a 'top-notch.' But, ironically, the acting of the movie's title character doesn't need to be particularly great, just adequate. Both versions of this movie are more about THE MYSTERY of quiet American, Alden Pyle and what he is doing in Vietnam in 1952, than they are about the characters themselves. So, Audie Murphy (and Brendan Fraser in the 2002 version) only had to basically 'show up' in the movie to have the story work well. BUT FIRST, let's consider the plot of the 1958 movie, with cross-references to the actors that played the same characters in the boring 2002 version.

As the movie opens, the people of Saigon are in the streets celebrating the Chinese New Year (Tet) with parades of noise makers, masks, and paper dragons. During the celebration, a Vietnamese man discovers the body of a white man, lying face down in the river. The body is that of Alden Pyle (Audie Murphy)(Brendan Fraser in 2002 version). Police Inspector Vigot (Claude Dauphin)(Rade Serbedzija in 2002 version) calls in a British journalist, Thomas Fowler (Michael Redgrave)(Micheal Caine in 2002 version), to identify the body. Fowler is also questioned about HIS whereabouts at the time of the suspected murder. At this point, there is a flashback that takes Fowler's recollections back to when and how he first met Pyle and what their relationship had been like during their acquaintance...

Basically, they met since they were both white men working in an Asian country, and they tended to go to the same social clubs and restaurants to relax with other English-speaking people. When Pyle first meets Fowler, Fowler is accompanied by his live-in Vietnamese girlfriend, Phuong (Giorgia Moll—Do)(Thi Hai Yen in the 2002 version). While dancing with Phuong at one of the European clubs, Pyle is taken with her. When Pyle learns from Fowler that he is separated from his wife (who still lives in England and refuses to give him a divorce), he honorably tells Fowler that he wants to openly court Phuong. Fowler reluctantly offers to translate (English to French) Pyle's intentions to Phuong. Pyle tells Phunog that he loves her and wants to marry her and take her back to the US: he wants to offer her a future, away from Vietnam. This is something that Fowler—as a married man--can't do. But, Fowler deeply loves Phuong and wants to continue to life with her in Vietnam. The tension of the love triangle is heightened because Phunong's older sister is trying to look out for Phunong's future by hooking her up with the idealized 'rich American man from New York.' The fact that Pyle is neither rich nor from New York is only a minor problem for Phunong and her controlling sister. So, Phunong does leave Fowler for Pyle (respectfully living apart while courting).

As a journalist looking for a story to keep his job in Vietnam, Fowler travels to Hanoi in the North. There, there is a Communist offensive against the French. When he arrives in the embattled North, he is surprised to find Pyle there too. But, why would Pyle there when his business is plastics? What do plastics have to do with an offensive in the North? Pyle tells Fowler that he just came up to see him and see the action for himself, but why? As the two return home in a jeep, they breakdown on the road and are attacked by Communist forces. Pyle then saves Fowler's life, and they return safely to Saigon.

While Fowler is ready to believe the worst about Pyle's third force, a fellow British reporter puts him in contact with a Vietnamese friend. The friend leads him to think the worst about Pyle and his reason for being in Vietnam. (Plastics are used in toys but they are also use in explosives.) When circumstantial evidence confirms the Vietnamese contact's incriminating evidence against Pyle, Fowler's ideas only seem more solid. The final outcome of this movie reveals more about Fowler and Pyle, and it has a quirky twist to it.

In spite of what other reviewers and critics have said about THIS version of Green's novel, I find it far superior to the later, more true-to-the-novel 2002 version (with the 20-20 hindsight epilogue). To me, there is nothing, whatsoever, corny about the ending of this version. In fact, I think that it is very ingenious!! It weaves political intrigue and a murder mystery together and shows how even an objective investigative journalist can be duped when his own ego is involved.

Graham Greene was justly outraged at the virtual rewriting of his original novel for cold war propaganda purposes. The original novel has a much more nuanced theme about involvement vs "objectivity," ideology vs belief as well as the destructive nature of activist ignorance.

In the novel, the main characters have symbolic values; Fowler, the British journalist, is a cynical "old world" person who claims absolute non-involvement in a war that he is reporting objectively claiming to be above ideology. Pyle, the "quiet American" is a young idealist and a product of academic political science faculties and the ideology of an editorial journalistic expert named York Harding ( a dog from Greene regarding what he thought were the worst incidents of American political culture -- the bellicose yokel Sgt York and the ignorant corruption of Warren Harding). They form a love triangle with an Animate Vietnamese beauty, Phuong who seems completely innocent, but according to the novel "owns herself completely".

Fowler's interest in Phuong is almost colonial, in that he wants her for personal comfort since he has a wife back in England. Pyle, with American idealism falls in love with Phuong at first sight and seeks to save her from Vietnam by taking her back to Texas as an American housewife. He doesn't, however, bother until much later to ask her opinion on the matter. Much in the way Americans have intervene ti bring "democracy" to countries they don't bother to understand, whether the locals want it or not.

Pyle and Fowler have several discussions regarding philosophy, theology and politics that would be hard to adequately present in a film. However, this film, a relic of the Cold war turns a thought -provoking novel into America-knows-best jingoism. Pyle knows everything and Fowler, although ostensibly erudite and cultured is a simple Communist dupe. Pyle, as a man of action, is morally impeccable and Fowler, as an intellectual, is a self-centered perfidious coward.

The only redeeming quality of this movie would be to study it in relation to Greene ' s actual novel as an exercise in the nature of cold war propaganda.