THE QUIET AMERICAN Shouts "Charge!" all over the World Now
Written: Feb 11 '03 (Updated Jun 12 '05)
Product Rating:
Pros: Superb allegorical story, relevant to today. A combination murder mystery, romantic triangle, war, spy movie
Cons: Perhaps . . . a little too by the numbers.
The Bottom Line: Michael Caine, Oscar Nominated for starring in THE QUIET AMERICAN, said it best: I was not Anti-American in the Vietnam War; I was Anti 300 Americans who caused it.
Who was Graham Greene's title character in his 1955 capstone novel, The Quiet American?
In Phillip Noyce's "new" film version, we see him first in his now grime besmirched white suit, being dumped into the Mykong River, and later in a Saigon morgue, where the French Colonial prefect, Inspector Vigot (Rade Serbedzija), interrogates the last one who saw the quiet American alive: one Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) -- the Englishman who is telling us the story.
Relegated to what the English consider the backwater of French IndoChina, Fowler, a hack correspondent for the London Times, encounters one day young Boston-bred Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), almost by accident. Pyle greets Fowler on The Terrace of the canopied courtyard to the Continental Hotel, in the center of Saigon, that most French of Asian Colonial capitals. He introduces himself, recognizing the older man for who he is.
No greater contrast could there be. Fowler, a veteran of his profession, mature, casual, lean -- taking care of himself in his 60's -- is waiting, as he does every day, for Phuong, his doe-eyed, virginal mistress, to join him. Pyle displays his characteristic nervous politeness. He is an American typical of the era, dressed for the sweat-making heat in white tropical linens, shirt and tie. (Fraser skillfully conveys Pyle's fussy character, the kind of guy who changes his shirt several times a day, probably runs to try to reduce his flab, decades before it became fashionable.) Just arrived in the country, he explains to Fowler that he is with a newly established U.S. medical mission [what was once called "Point 4 Aid"]. Glaucoma -- it can be stopped, he says, if caught in time (an American mantra). He is not a medical doctor, mind, but he has great hopes of saving people's ability to see.
[Fowler . . . Pyle . . . a non-doctor ambitious to save a people's ability to see -- Greene was writing an allegory, one more perceptive than he could have known.]
Fowler asks him about the book he is carrying? Pyle enthusiastically points to its title: Dangers to Democracy. [Possibly, a forerunner of Dr. Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communist Crusade tracts of the late 1950's.] He deferentially expounds on the dangers of Communism to Freedom in IndoChina. Oblivious, of course, to the poverty, virtual slavery and degradation all around among the bicycling figures they walk among.
A good reporter, Fowler is like many of us, in that he avoids getting involved in politics. Alden Pyle, indeed a sufferable pain in the you-know-where, is a man who often seems to be self-censoring himself before he speaks. Yet, each will admit secrets before the end of THE QUIET AMERICAN that disturb the other far more than at first was apparent.
When Phuong, a taxi dancer across the square at L'Arc en Ciel, joins them, Pyle is all in a juvenile, courtly dither. He no doubt expected the relaxed, intelligent, well-informed reporter to have a companion. Still, he is clearly amazed that so young and beautiful a woman should be with Fowler, but he conveys good luck to both of them in their May-September marriage. [He is too polite to express it that bluntly.]
But, Fowler enlightens him offhandedly that his legal wife is in England. He and Phuong are simply lovers.
Rather shocked at this frank admission of immorality, no doubt from a well-grounded religious conviction, Pyle is a good sport (and attracted enough to Phuong) to invite them around to the Consulate. There they meet a consummate American administrator, Joe Tunney (Robert Stanton), and a really Ugly American, the blustering military attache, Bill Granger. Fowler already knows them, of course, but when Granger insults Phuong in a vulgar fashion, Pyle in embarrassment herds the drunken man away, saying that he would like to meet the couple later for dinner. As it turns out, Fowler and Phuong eventually must rescue the horrified Pyle from a swarm of charmingly desperate Asian cocottes whom Grainger has attracted in the House of 500 Girls, near where Phuong dances.
And so, their triangular relationship has begun.
THE QUIET AMERICAN is a highly successful melding of a murder story with political intrigue, guerilla warfare, cultural misunderstanding, guilt and romantic jealousy, in a context of Cold War history. Greene's novel was, in my opinion, his most accomplished coalescing of many elements on which his reputation as a writer was based, and THE QUIET AMERICAN's screenplay by Christopher Hampton (DANGEROUS LAISONS, Frears, 1988) and Robert Schenkkan (SON OF MORNING STAR, Robe, 1991) remains faithful to the book; far more so than Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1958 version, which made Fowler (Michael Redgrave) a convenient British blackguard, and Pyle (Audie Murphy) almost entirely innocent in the events of the story.
The guerilla war is immediately upon them, as Ho Chi-Minh's forces continue to pick off French strong points, moving closer and closer to Saigon. Fowler finds himself pressured on several fronts. Pyle's awkwardly proper, gauche pursuit of Phuong -- prefaced by a "let's be men of the World" declaration to the old newsman -- proves romantic enough to impress a young girl in some discomfort with her relationship. What's worse for Fowler, her older sister (Pham Thi Mai Hoa), a manager of the dancehall where she works, always suspicious of Fowler, is impressed with the quiet, youthful American. Especially when he gets her a shorthand position at the American Consulate. Meanwhile, the London Times summons Fowler home, too diffident to note that he has written but few articles (3) in the last year. The despairing Fowler writes his (Catholic) wife, asking for a divorce so he may marry Phuong, and volunteers to make a rare journalistic foray into the countryside to cover a French stronghold (Phat Diem) under attack. Who should join him in the field but Pyle, suddenly not so avuncular as first impressions might indicate.
Encouraged by a reprieve from London, won through his article on the massacre/battle, Fowler, with the help of his legman, Hinh (Tzi Ma), crusades out again to interview a General The (Quan Hai), a death-mask in dark glasses, who represents an ostensible Third Force in IndoChina (which, after the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu, became historically the Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem -- to whom Mankiewicz dedicated his 1958 picture). When Fowler runs into a problem with his credentials, who should happen to be setting up a clinic in the General's camp? You got it: Pyle. Not only that, but before the night is out the vigorous American Pyle saves Fowler's life. What could be more mortifying to an Englishman, an older contestant for the favors of a young IndoChinese woman?
[I told you this story was an allegory.]
Cold War History becomes eerily current, as ambiguously instigated acts of terrorism take place, and there has to be an inspection of a mysterious bicycle factory, which may actually conceal what we call today "weapons of mass destruction."
When Fowler speculates that the U.S. might have some involvement in the terrorism, to gain an advantage when the French are pushed out, Pyle snickers respectfully: "Come on, Thomas, Americans aren't colonialists!"
Written several years ago, filmed well before President Bush and his advisors decided to carry out their long standing plan to occupy the Middle East and Central Asia, that line drew gasping, bitter chuckles from the packed audience at the San Francisco's Bridge theater, where I saw THE QUIET AMERICAN, last Friday night.
Gorgeously filmed on location in Vietnam by Christopher Doyle (assisted by Huu Tuan Nguyen and Dat Quang), suspensefully cut by John Scott (**SEXY BEAST, 2000), carrying out the superb Production Design of Robert Ford (BABE: PIG IN THE CITY), Phillip Noyce's direction of THE QUIET AMERICAN, in a long career, is the best thing he has ever done. The urban scenes have an amber sheen of sun and lantern light; the countryside action is alternately bathed in dark blue green or the orange-red of explosions; and whosoever is responsible for the contained energy and tension in THE QUIET AMERICAN, it is Noyce will receive the credit.
A couple of unstressed, ambiguously meaningful touches:
Note how much pride Phuong has in her traditional dresses and hair style early in the film, when she is with Fowler. Watch how her dress changes to halter necks, and how her hair comes down, under the influence of Pyle.
Note, too, the effective use of *music in THE QUIET AMERICAN. For instance, early on, the first singer we see in L'Arc en Ciel (Natasha Hunter), wearing a Vietnamese gown, sings "La Vie en Rose," in front of a French combo. Then, notice that, in another scene at the club, near the end of the picture, a second singer (Martine Monroe) presents a rendition of "Besame Mucho," in Western dress, subtly emphasizing the ascendancy of a new influence.
Some criticism has been directed toward Caine, charging him with being too old for the part of Fowler (who was 52 in Greene's novel). However, one of the aims of THE QUIET AMERICAN is to show that in 1952, an older white male, with money or power, could command a beauty like Phuong. Of course, as other critics have charged, such relationships are sexist, but but Fowler and Pyle are men of their time. They are equally sexist toward their love objects, each in his own national style, and although the term sexism was not recognized in the 1950's, both Graham Greene's book and Noyce's film convey the fact. [It goes without saying that such relationships do continue today in the Far East, and elsewhere.] Caine is an actor who often comments on the art of film acting (has commercial tapes on the subject), but I have thought that too often during his 65 film career, he merely played Michael Caine. In THE QUIET AMERICAN, however, he creates a distinctive Tom Fowler, modulating his distinctive voice, and underplaying his part in a measured way. [His performance matches that of his "Jack Dodds" in **LAST ORDERS (Schepisi, 2001), his last great film.]
Then, a few critics have taken out after 19 year-old Do Thi Hai Yen's performance [her first] as Phuong, for lacking assertiveness, but that, too, is a point of the film. Phuong (like Pyle, incidentally) is the daughter of a professor, who has died and left her in the City without resources. If she cannot escape this environment, the House of 500 Girls awaits her. She expresses her sad wisdom to Pyle in a particularly poignant scene, when she tells him of a girl (her sister?) whose boyfriend promised to take her with him back to Paris. But when they got to the airport, the boyfriend slipped away from her. It is an old story, but from the lips of one so fragile and lovely, it is evocative and revealing.
Finally, there is criticism that Brendan Fraser is too bumbling, too inconsistent in his part. However, to my mind, Fraser captures perfectly that mixture of innocence and subdued arrogance that marked many culturally ignorant young Americans overseas at the time. [We are usually not so innocent today, nor is our arrogance so hidden, even from ourselves (as befits representatives of Empire), but we are sometimes no less ignorant.]
It has been widely remarked that THE QUIET AMERICAN, ready for release on September 9, 2001, was held up, along with half a dozen other films, in view of the attack on the World Trade Center, as being too disturbing, disrespectful or "unpatriotic." In fact, overriding Executive Producer Sidney Pollak (OUT OF AFRICA, 1990) and Producer Anthony Minghella (**THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, 2000), Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, the American distributor, was of a mind not to release the film at all, but to send it right to video with other non-starters. He relented and gave it limited release in November of last year, at the urging of Michael Caine, who felt he could receive an Oscar nomination, so they say, and because of favorable reviews at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival. [As I write, Caine has just been given his Oscar Nomination, but of course, other nominations and much box office may have been lost because Weinstein was too cowardly to give the film wide release before Christmas.]
The quiet American . . . a common English expression after the War, to differentiate that rarity from the more "normal American" . . . .
Who, in reality, was the Quiet American?
Gordon Lonsdale! [No, Lonsdale was born a Russian (1922), really named Konon Trofimovich Molody, who grew up in California, became member of a Communist youth group, served in WWII, was sent by the KGB afterward to gain a "legend" in Canada, and hence to England, where he was arrested in London in 1961 for stealing Naval Secrets, and eventually died in Moscow in 1970.] Well, I get them all mixed up these days -- Oh . . . then, we must have been thinking of Lt. Colonel (later Major General) Edward Lansdale?
[Possibly, but that genius of early covert CIA actions in the Philippines, IndoChina and other places later, by most accounts, did not arrive in Saigon until 1953, although Graham Greene, an agent for British MI5 himself, may have met him subsequently.]
Maybe, William Harvey . . . .
[No, again! Harvey was in Berlin at the time, not IndoChina, and no one ever called him "a quiet American." More likely, "the Ugly American." However, The Ugly American himself did not enter the language or our consciousness until the Lederer/Burdick novel of 1958, the same year that Joseph Mankiewitz's bowdlerized film version of THE QUIET AMERICAN premiered. By that time, America was sinking ever more deeply and secretly into what became known as Vietnam, and some of us were beginning to detect inklings of what had been going on (a relentless covert war) since the latter days of World War II.]
The closest match is probably the long-forgotten young Doctor Jim Turpin, who flew around the South Pacific to places like the Philippines, during the Huk insurrection, and into IndoChina, setting up medical clinics. He was great copy in Time and Newsweek. Wherever there was trouble, he flew; likewise, if no trouble was present when he landed, it soon followed. "Dr. Jim," as he was known, died of cancer in the early 1960's, or was it in a plane crash? I can't remember, but after his death, it was learned that he had also been an American secret agent. (Others have taken up the name, "Dr. Jim," and some are flying around the World to this day.)
There were a lot of those guys back then.
But aspects of any, or all, of those motley figures may have been stirred into Graham Greene's quiet young American.
Actually, Alden Pyle, both in Greene's novel and in Phillip Noyce's "new" film, is that most dangerous of the species: a puritan romantic on a mission. Hard to find these days, except in the older American models, who seem to be employed exclusively, at present, within or by our Executive establishment.
I've known several Quiet Americans. In fact, at a particular moment, I might have become one myself. I well remember cheery Colonel G.B.S. Howe -- in mufti -- interviewing me for a position with Army Counter Intelligence at the Engineer's Building in Cleveland, circa 1953. Like others I've encountered, like Aidan Pyle in the movie, my quiet American was polite overseas, rather well-educated, from a good solid family, an idealist (therefore, easily persuaded to extremes), a puritan, profoundly Anti-Communist (not aware that the avowed motivation for my attitude was a charade), unquestioningly "patriotic" -- that is to say, nationalistic -- and as I've suggested, very romantic -- in the 19th Century definition of the term.
Noyce's film ends with a series of newspaper articles, written by Tom Fowler, which chronicle the growth of the American involvement in Vietnam, from a few Quiet Americans -- the Aidan Pyles, the Joe Tunneys, the Bill Grangers, the Dr. Jims, then the Edward Lansdales -- to 450,000 American troops, 55,000 or so of them killed in the process, along with 3,000,000 Asians. That encapsulates the philosophical meaning of the film.
There is a climactic moment in THE QUIET AMERICAN, when Fowler begins to recite a stanza from an obscure long poem, and Pyle handily finishes it. The lines are from "Dypsichus," a posthumous work about a modern Faust, by minor English Romantic poet, Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), who came to doubt the value of the mechanical age. [He spent his early childhood in South Carolina before returning to England.] The gist of the stanza is, If my bicycle knocks over someone in the street, why should I feel any personal responsibility?
It is the final ambiguity of the plot.
I don't know about you, but I'm going to find a Peace Rally to attend this weekend, my second in over 30 years.
If you are abroad, you might do worse than see THE QUIET AMERICAN. I recommend it.
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* Few recent soundtrack mixtures of "found" and commissioned songs have impressed me so much as the musical work done by Craig Armstrong (**MOULIN ROUGE, Luhrmann, 2000) and Guy Cross on THE QUIET AMERICAN. I append the soundtrack listing, which of course is available for sale on CD:
"Nuoc Non Lam Son"
Written by Hoang Quy
Performed by Manh Phat
* "Tieng Dan Ai"
Written by Hoang Trong & Quoc Bao
Performed by Moc Lan
* "Tieng Sao Trong Suong"
Traditional
Performed by Co Ly Nuong
* "Mon Ange"
Lyrics by Jean Féline/Bruno Coquatrix
(c) 1940 Warner Chappell Music France SA
(ex Editions Musicales Ray Ventura)
Used by permission of Warner Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved
Performed by Léo Marjane
* "Song From Hue"
Traditional
Performed by Lo Ng Uyen Thy, Do Thi Le Tuyet, Le Thi Thanh Mai
* "Exterior l'Arc en Ciel"
Written by William Motzing
* "Nhac Long"
Written by Canh Than
Performed by Ngoc Bao
* "Suoi Mo"
Written by Van Cao
Performed by Hong Nhung
* "Mademoiselle de Paris"
Composed by Duran / Contet / Vaschwitz
(c) 1948 Ed. Mus. Continental-Intersong
(assigned to Warner/Chappell Music France S.A.)
Used by permission of Warner / Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved
Performed by Natasha Hunter
* "Thien Thai"
Written by Van Cao
Performed by Hong Nhung
* "J'ai Deux Amours"
Composed by Vincent Scotto / Geo Koger / Henri Varna
Editions Salabert S.A. (AC)
Used by permission of Warner / Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved
Performed by Natasha Hunter
* "Besame Mucho"
Written by Consuelo Velazquez / Ricardo Lopez Mendez / Sunny Skylar
Southern Music Publishing Co. (A'Asia) Pty Ltd.
Licensed from Souther Music Publishing Co. (A'Asia) P/L
* "Our Love Affair"
Written by Arthur Freed and Roger Edens
(c) 1940 EMI Feist Catalog Inc.
Licensed by EMI Catalogue Partnership Australia Pty Limited
* "Tieng Goi Thanh Nien"
The Call To Youth
Written by Luu Huu Phuoc
Performed by The Army Music Band
* "11 Hours"
Written by Joe E Rand
Superscore Music (ASCAP)
Performed by Joe E Rand
* "Je Suis Swing"
Composed by André Homez / John Hess
(c) 1939 Editions Musicales Ray Ventura (assigned to Warner /
Chappell Music France S.A.)
Used by permission of Warner/Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved
Performed by Johnny Hess
* "La Vie en Rose"
Music by Louiguy
Lyrics by Edith Piaf
Published by Campbell Connelly & Co (Aust) Pty Ltd
Performed by Louis Armstrong
Courtesy of MCA Records Inc.
Under license from Universal Music Aust Pty Ltd
* "So Do I"
Written by Johnny Burke (II) / Arthur Johnston
(c) Anne-Rachel Music Corporation & J Albert & Son Pty Ltd
* "Song for Phuong"
Composed by Craig Armstrong (II)
Lyrics by Craig Armstrong (II) & Hong Nhung
Performed by Hong Nhung
* "June Light"
Composed by Jack Trombey
Rouge Music Ltd / De Wolfe Limited
* "Dich Mau Biet Kim Lang"
Traditional
Performed by Co Nam Can Tho
* "Mon Homme"
Composed by Maurice Yvain / Jacques Charles / Albert Willemetz
(c) Salabert Soc (OA) / Aschenberg Hopwood and Crew Limited (AP)
Used by permission of Warner / Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved
Performed by Sidney Bechet
* "La Seine"
Composed by Guy Lafarge / Flavien Monod
(c) 1948 Société des Editions Royalty (assigned to Editions et
Productions Théatrales Chappell)
Used by permission of Warner / Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved
Performed by Christian Dollslager
* "Insensiblement"
Composed by Paul Misraki
(c) 1939 Editions Imperia (assidned to Warner / Chappell Music France S.A.)
Used by permission of Warner/Chappell Music Australia Pty Ltd
All rights reserved
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