The Quiet American
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Movie Reviews of The Quiet American
Movie Review: The Quiet American
Summary: 3 Stars
Audie Murphy is one of my favorite actors. I didn't know anything about this movie before I bought it but it's probably my least favorites of anything I have seen of his.Movie Review: Worth seeing only as a time-capsule, not as a film
Summary: 2 Stars
This 1958 film of Graham Greene's novel is interesting today mostly as an historical artifact. It is not a particularly outstanding example of the art of cinema, just a dated melodrama in which the location exteriors in Saigon lead to interior dialogue scenes that are stagy and leaden and obviously take place on unconvincing studio sets. It is admittedly fascinating to see some of the exact same Saigon locations that were used in the 2002 film, and Michael Redgrave does bring a weight and soul to the role of Fowler.
Sadly, however, the film brutalizes his character. Where Greene's novel was about a world-weary Brit, confronted with a blindly idealistic American willing to sacrifice innocent lives in the name of his goals, the film inverts everything. Pyle is a virtual saint and Fowler merely the gullible old man who plays a part in Pyle's downfall not out of a desire to protect the innocent, but simply to rid himself of a romantic rival. It is not difficult to see why Graham Greene was incensed by the film and disowned it.
Fascinatingly, director/screenwriter Joe Mankiewicz manages to make this total change largely by the addition of one scene at the end. His film basically follows Greene's novel, up until [SPOILER WARNING!] an atrocious final scene in which we learn that Fowler has been hoodwinked all along by the Communists, and has destroyed a noble American who was genuinely bringing freedom and hope to Indochina. A prescient warning about America's doomed involvement in Vietnam becomes a piece of jingoistic propaganda to support the war.
The 2002 film, in comparison, is amazingly faithful to the novel. I don't always hold that as the measure of a film's success, but with a master storyteller like Greene, why mess with perfection. Do not choose this film if you want accomplished filmmaking, or an accurate interpretation of Graham Greene's intentions, for that pick up Phillip Noyce's 2002 film. Watch this only afterwards, to see how a few small changes can undermine an entire narrative.
Movie Review: NTSC copy sent!
Summary: 1 Stars
I was pretty annoyed firstly at the length of time this item took to arrive, but mostly at the fact that they'd sent me an NTSC copy rather than the PAL version.
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