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The quiet American

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Movie propaganda

In war, the most powerful weapon is seduction.

Saigon, 1952, a beautiful, exotic, and mysterious city caught in the grips of the Vietnamese war of liberation from the French colonial powers. New arrival Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), an idealistic American aid worker, befriends London Times correspondent Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine). When Fowler introduces Pyle to his beautiful young Vietnamese mistress Phuong (Do Hai Yen) the three become swept up in a tempestuous love triangle that leads to a series of startling revelations and finally - murder. Nothing, and no one, is as it seems, in this adaptation of Graham Greene's classic and prophetic story of love, betrayal, murder and the origin of the American war in Southeast Asia.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film Vietnam war adventure romance love murder betrayal sex

Persons of interest

Michael Caine .... Thomas Fowler
Brendan Fraser .... Alden Pyle
Do Thi Hai Yen .... Phuong
Rade Serbedzija .... Inspector Vigot
Tzi Ma .... Hinh
Robert Stanton .... Joe Tunney
Holmes Osborne .... Bill Granger
Quang Hai .... General Thé
Ferdinand Hoang .... Mr Muoi
Graham Greene .... Author
Christopher Hampton .... Screenwriter
Robert Schenkkan .... Screenwriter
Phillip Noyce .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film festivals:

Toronto International Film Festival 2002: Special Presentation

The quiet American QuickTime movie trailers:

Small * Medium * Large

Studios and distributors:

Intermedia * Buena Vista International

Intelligence analyst

Agent Provocateur Alexander Feld

Theatrical report

Sir Michael Caine is obviously as persuasive out of character as he is in. Apparently, all that was needed for Harvey Weinstein, Chairman of Miramax, to release Phillip Noyce's postponed The quiet American was a telephone call from its leading actor.

It seems that Quiet, a political romance set in Saigon in 1952, might be a bit unpalatable for post 11 September audiences. What got Sir Michael to pick up the phone, however, is neither artistic accountability nor responsibility; a January release would keep him out of the 2003 Oscar nominations. At 69, this could be his last shot at Best Actor. Based upon the evidence, he should now be as worried about his acceptance speech.

He plays Thomas Fowler, the sort of Greene character that could have been lifted out of Somerset Maugham at his most cynical, a London Times correspondent who has fled England and a loveless marriage to live in Saigon and "report" on the twilight of French colonial rule. What he has basically done is drink tea, enjoy the pleasures of his Vietnamese mistress and his opium pipe, and purvey a complete detachment from the political maelstrom that is gathering force around him. Only when faced with returning to cold London does he decide to go into the field and report, giving Fleet Street enough of a story to allow him to remain.

Thomas Fowler may be the richest role of Sir Michael's long career, his performance is a veritable triumph of effortless understatement. The symbolism of the role is not lost on Caine; he is cool and detached but still noble, like the retreating Empire he represents. Although archetypally British enough to keep a stiff upper lip in the hairiest situations, he is a gentleman to the core, his hidden torment just under his thick skin. Mr Caine even allows Fowler to occasionally hint at his Cockney past.

Behind this Indo-Chinese screen hides the romantic streak central to the story. Fowler is living with the beautiful Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen, a Vietnamese actress making her international debut in this role), a former taxi dancer who is now dependant on him. The set-up can clearly last only as long as Fowler keeps his job, he cannot take her back to England as his Catholic wife knows his philandering ways and will not grant a divorce. They are British, after all, and it is 1952.

Phuong (the name means Phoenix, get it?) is Asian feminine beauty at its most mysterious. Stoic, noble and compliant to Western needs, she remains impenetrable, an emotional enigma. Although seemingly affectionate and devoted, this is no Vietnamese Madame Butterfly. In fact, in many ways she seems to symbolise Vietnam itself; she's just trying to cut the best deal she can.

Hai Yen's performance is one of the joys of the film. A dancer by training and a dance teacher by profession, she began the shooting in phonetic English and only mastered the language by the end of filmmaking. Her instincts are clearly natural, witness her transformation from taxi dancer to concubine to American girlfriend, to jaded victim of love, to opportunistic nihilist, all expressed with the simplest gestures or facial expressions. More of her, please.

The drama begins when Fowler meets The Quiet American, Alden Pyle, ardently played by Brendan Fraser, an intelligence agent operating under the cover of a medical aid worker. Cast against type, Fraser plays Pyle as a bespectacled naïf, idealistic, clumsy, altruistic and oafish. It is daring character acting, and is clearly very well thought out, but it is unsettling. The heroism revealed mid-way through the film seems inchoate with earlier visions of Pyle, and when it is revealed that The quiet American has been plotting very loudly indeed, the incongruousness of the characterisation makes it almost seem that that the CIA has sent a method actor to Saigon, not a scheming agent under guise.

Predictably, as soon as Fowler introduces The Quiet American to Phuong, Pyle falls madly in love with her. He soon thinks nothing of sharing this with his new friend. (This is a hard scene; unfortunately it is Fraser's weakest moment in the film.) Fowler is soon caught in a sad lie and the opportunistic Phuong moves in with Pyle. They maintain that civilised, gentlemanly friendship that is the film's axis.

As the plot develops, it re-examines the concept that the Personal is and must be Political, that one cannot be "un-involved". With subtlety and care, the direction allows Fowler and Pyle's deep relationship to tackle notions of honour among complex gentleman in a post-colonial, cold war context. It is also a more obvious metaphor for clashes of Empires and ideologies: Fowler the British, world wearied, resigned, disinterested at twilight, and Pyle the American, optimistic, idealistic, interventionist, foolishly trusting.

Phillip Noyce, the celebrated director of Rabbit-proof fence and Dead calm, offers a visual treat of a movie. Saigon at night, moonlight on the river, a crowded marketplace, the majestic Vietnamese countryside, all comes vividly to life. The script, by the accomplished Christopher Hampton, is a fine adaptation, making wonderful use of Caine's occasional voice-overs, maintaining a fair bit of Greene's lyrical prose without getting bogged down in words. But when the guns begin to fire, people begin to take sides, and things begin to blow up, Noyce does not create an edge-of-your seat dramatic tension. There are several moments of stomach-turning gore, but, replete with slow-motion camera effects and music, they strike an oddly lyrical discord.

However, Greene's story is essentially a love triangle in an exotic locale, so it can be forgiven that the film adaptation does not convey political passion. (As a work of cinema, it cannot approach Peter Weir's The year of living dangerously. Set in a similar climate, you can feel and smell the political perspiration.) This is perhaps honest adaptation of the material - Fowler may be apolitical, but he is not amoral. Pyle may be a mawkish schemer, but he is not evil. And Indochine in 1952, and American policy towards it, was a long way from the conundrum that would inevitably follow. Although an epilogue attempts to link these moments in history, such a passage never came from Greene's pen, and it seems more of a gratuitous nod to viewers acquainted not with history but with Platoon and The deer hunter.

Nonetheless, this lyricism that begins with Sir Michael's mellifluous opening narration sets a mood and a time that is sustained to near perfection throughout the nearly two hour film. And what about Phoung, symbolic of Viet Nam, Phoenix rising from the ashes? Treated more as an object than as a woman by the films two central characters, making her calculated decisions at the end, we are reminded of Pyle's best line: "Daughter of a professor, a taxi dancer by profession, mistress to an old European, protected by an American." Now that sums up the backdrop of history, and the horrors that would follow, better than any moment in fiction.