"The Quiet American"

It's playing in Seattle, and I saw it yesterday. I thought the film was excellent. I was aware that the film's opening had been delayed but didn't know why. It amuses me that it was for patriotic reasons. The Americans, admittedly, don't come off too well in the film, but given what was going on at the time, Greene certainly had his reasons for those portrayals!

I hate to disagree with you gentlemen, but I didn't much care for the film, possibly because I know and love the book. Caine is too old for the part, not to mention the fact that Michael Redgrave gave a much better performance in the role in the Fifties movie version. I thought Brendan Fraser was appallingly bad as Pyle--not a spark of intelligence or deviousness. The girl is cute but can't act. And the movie blundered when it came to the politics, though by now it should be possible to CLEARLY spell out what the CIA was up to in Vietnam. The montage of newspaper headlines at the end was embarassing--do we need to be told that the US sent troops to Vietnam??? Philip Noyce is a blah director and this is a blah, uninspired and uninspiring film.

Joined: 22 Jan 2003
Posts: 39
Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2003 12:06 am    Post subject:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larr Richette,

I had not read your comments on THE QUIET AMERICAN before posting mine.
I guess we could not be farther apart in our opinion of that movie. You're an erudite s.o.b. (complement) and I respect your perscipacity. Having said so, I continue to be amazed how subjective the criticism of all art is. No work of art can be proved to be better than another. Having said that, I think one of the joys of life is trying to do just that - trying to prove one work of art better than another.

I wonder if the size of the opulent "Siamese byzantiine" decor theater(about 400 seats) and the packed house influenced my opinion. Both the audience to THE PIANIST and THE QUIET AMERICAN sat glued to their seats throughout the long credits.

Larry Richette,

No! No! Disagree! Disagree! What's the point if we all agree?

Yes, I do know how to spell perspicacity but my fingers don't.

I am glad to see that I am encouraged to disagree. LOL. This is not the case in the Books Forum, where I am being vilified for impugning the greatness of Thomas Pynchon.

Billy, a friend just lent me a copy of the novel--an old paperback, costing 25 cents, featuring a cigarette-smoking American on the cover. Very noir-ish. I can't wait to read it!

D'art--It is a great novel. One of Greene's best. When you've read it, post about it on my Graham Greene thread over in Books!

Brendan Frasier didn't convey deviousness??? Maybe you saw a different movie!!! I thought his scrubbed demeanor at the beginning was pitch perfect, something that came back and slammed me in the gut when he was screaming in Vietnamese at the end.

Caine's best work ever was in The Man Who Would Be King but this was a close second. The details are where a great actor is revealed and Caine's face when he hears Pyle speak Vietnamese was enough for best actor.

I hate mysteries and spy thrillers but this movie convinced me to read Greene and my name is on the waiting list at the library.

Right you are, plainoldme, re Brendan Frasier's portrayal of the American Pyle. I was completely taken by surprise. And his boyish handsomeness made him perfect for the role.

D'Artagnan -- Another thing about casting Frasier is that he is bigger physically than Caine, who at 6'2" is a big man but with a slender bodytype. Frasier is beefy. So, Caine, a tall and thin man, plays Britain and beefy and bigger Frasier is America. Perfect!

Indeed, plainoldme. The only cavil about the casting that I saw was in a review in the NY Review of Books. The point was made that perhaps Caine was too old for his role. I guess in the novel, Fowler's in his 50s. I didn't necessarily agree with that point--Caine was great--and I'm sure men as old as that had young girl friends. Heck, they still do!

I could not see where the character's age has anything to do with it. If Greene had written the novel much later in life, he may have made the character much older. I always thought that character was Greene himself. Caine wasn't as stodgy as Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy was hardly a foil for Redgrave who still ran acting circles around him, virtually upstaging in every screen encounter at no fault of his own. I like Noyes' directing of all the actors -- the performances were balanced and rang true. I do want to do back and read the novel and go back and see the Mankiewicz 1958 version (haven't seen it in years and wonder if there is even a print around anymore). Otherwise, I did put it on my top ten list as the film rose above many offerings for the year.

Agreed, Lightwizard. I was only mentioning what the reviewer pointed out about the age of the character in the novel. The earlier film, by the way, apparently changed the plot to make the Americans the good guys. This, again, according to the NYRB review. I wanted to post the URL here, so the critic can speak for himself, but the article isn't online.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times:
Fowler may be the richest character of Mr. Caine's screen career. Slipping into his skin with an effortless grace, this great English actor gives a performance of astonishing understatement whose tone wavers delicately between irony and sadness. Fowler is the embodiment of a now-faded British archetype: the suave, impeccably well-mannered man of the world who keeps a stiff upper lip and camouflages any inner torment under a pose of amused knowingness.

Mr. Caine, with his hooded snake eyes and his trace of a Cockney accent, lends Fowler (played by Michael Redgrave in an earlier screen adaptation of the novel) an added frisson of rakish insouciance that makes the character all the more intriguing.

I agree -- it was much less obvious what Fowler is all about in this new version and that may have been because of the interaction with Audie Murphy in the 1958 version made that character too American as apple pie.

(This one making him more American than an SUV).

D'Artgnan -- The other day, someone told me that Terrance Stamp, 63, married a 28 year old woman. She is 28 and thought marriage to a man more than old enough to be her father was disgusting. I am 8 years younger than Stamp and I generally would think a man 63 is too old for me!
I have to say that Caine did not look his years in the movie.

Agreed; Caine looked handsome in the movie--and much younger than his actual age.

A friend of mine recently (and briefly) dated a woman half his age. When asked why, he replied, "Because I can."

D'Artagnan -- For some reason, your name makes me think not of the Musketeers but of the album, "Dart to the Heart." Who knows why?

When I was in my 20s, I went out with two men who were considerably older than I was then. One was 19 years older, very handsome, a lot like that Aussie who plays Crocodile Dundee in looks. He was a character in a book called, "A Peck of Salt," a memoir of a man's (his name escapes me) year as a VISTA volunteer in Detroit. Although I had really liked this man when we first met, his lists of co-incidences and famous people he knew (he claimed to have studied at Actor's Studio and maybe he did), began to wear on me. He was insulted by the way he and one of his friends were portrayed in the book. Frankly, I thought the author was accurate and my reading of the book ended our relationship.

The second man was 17 years my senior and tied with one other for the most handsome man I ever dated ... who knows what either would look like today? Or how they would shape up side by side? He was a prof at Wayne State U., where I was a grad student in the evening division. We met in the cafeteria through a mutual friend and had one date. More than enough! He took me to a very good restaurant. ORDERED FOR ME!! Then proceeded to drink his lunch...seven old-fashioneds in a row. Last date!