The Quiet American: A Cinematic Masterpiece

I just read the novel again and found scene after great scene that were left out of the movie, to the detriment of the movie

Am about half way through the book and so far, can not find anything that was left out of the movie. There is less opium smoking in the movie, but that hardly counts.

Lightwizard,
I remember someone telling me that the book was far more a love story than the movie was and I agree with that. The people are quite real.

I wish I had a scanner because I would like to scan in pp. 119-23 of the Viking Edition, third printing, of The Quiet American, because these pages illustrate how close to the movie's theme the book's theme is.

Plainoldme must be reading the comic book edition. There are many major scenes in the novel which the movie omits. The most obvious one: Pyle forces Phuoung to choose between Fowler and himself, and she chooses to stay with Fowler, saying "Non" to Pyle. I guess they left that sceen out of the comic book edition Plainoldme is busy with.

Down to the final 8 pages of the book. There is a slight difference in what one friend of mine (my former boyfriend!) would call the "trajectory" of the book and the trajectory of the novel, making the scene in which Phuong was "forced (an incorrect word)" to choose between the two men almost unnecessary. I say almost because it appears in a truncated form.

Basically, the movie is about 90% faithful to the book. The political philosophy is the most faithful part, followed by the love triangle (if a real triangle it is -- I doubt that Pyle carred for Phuong at all), followed by the plot.

Differences include a slight elaboration on political philosophy in the form of one statement early on by Fowler...generally, a more romantic Fowler with a happy ending ... and, most significant, the presentation of Fowler by Greene as naive.

I highly recommend both the book and the movie to any and all. Reading the book first will not spoil the movie.

The scene where Phuoung chooses betweeen the two men does not appear in ANY form in the movie, truncated or otherwise. Other scenes that do not appear:
1) Fowler in the opium den in Hanoi

2) the sequence at the Caodaist Temple outside Saigon

3) Granger at the House of a Thousand Girls, when Pyle says the girls make him worry about Phuong

4) the press briefing in Hanoi when the French officer complains that the Americans are stingy with supplies

Among others!

How anyone could read the novel after seeing the movie and miss these cuts is absolutely beyond me. It just proves what I've always suspected, that plainoldme isn't reading the book too carefully.

Movie makers consistently change and omit scenes from novels -- there isn't one I can think of that this hasn't been done for "artistic license." Maybe larry believes Philip Noyes' license should be revoked. I still feel it is good filmmaking albeit not the most faithful adaptation of all time. It's the same dilemma from the beginning of making films -- produce something commercially viable or go for the strictly artistic expression and bedamned the public. So many filmmakers compromise and make a film that is somewhere inbetween. I know my biases about historic film fiddling around with history have always colored my opinion of a film as it is too often done dishonestly and unnecessarily. Tampering with a fictional work, even one with some historic background, seems prudent in translating written narrative to visual narrative. Movies are an expression of all the arts -- Kubrick definitely used painting in devising the cinematography of "Barry Lyndon," many of these scenes in Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" look like impressionist's paintings and John Huston consciously gave his "Moulin Rouge" the look of a Latrec painting. One is telling a story with pictures as much as telling it with dialogue in a film. We get to imagine someone's expression and body language in a book. In interpreting a novel, this makes the movie director not much different than a symphony orchestra conductor, so I don't see how one can simplify the medium. BTW, frescos are paintings.

The issue is not whether a book should be changed in the process of adapting it for the screen--we all know source material can and should be changed. The issue is how WELL it has been changed. What I am arguing is that Noyce and his screenwriters (one of whom is the talented Christopher Hampton who did such a great job with DANGEROUS LIAISONS) blunted the edge of the novel by leaving out key scenes. It also didn't help that Caine is 20 years older than the character in the book, or that Brendan Fraser was totally miscast in a part that Tim Robbins was born to play.

Lightwizard claims that movies are an expression of all the arts. Nonsense. They are a narrative medium. If Kubrick and Huston used paintings as sources for shots, they did so ONLY to tell the stories they were trying to put on the screen. When was the last time you saw an abstract non-narrative movie, Lightwizard? Where is the Jackson Pollack or Picasso of film? He doesn't exist, because film is about stories and characters. It is a DRAMATIC art. It is not painterly, musical, sculptural, or like any other fine art. That is why producers buy the rights to novels and plays and not to paintings and sculptures.

The point is that the narrative is described often in purely pictoral terms without the necessity of dialogue -- in fact, I barely pay attention to a lot of dialogue as characters seem to be saying exactly what you expect them to say (or I remember a book so well, I know what they are basically going to say and as their actions are only described, I am sensitive to how the particular directors sees them). Narrative is when a voice over starts telling the story -- a crutch that is nearly always a bad sign that the movie fails in pictoral terms. I didn't say every single movie encompassed all of the arts although some of them do (perhaps too general a statement). Anyone might put Pollack or Picasso on a level above all filmmakers. I don't. There are many films that are just as effective and absorbing as anything they ever painted. Of course, there has to be a story to tell with characters (sometimes they're animals like "Watership Down"). I just fundamentally disagree that film is anything like the written word and Noyce and his screenwriter, although they made a rather different political point than Greene (times have changed, after all, and we are now looking backward through many trepidations in that area -- Greene might have written a different book if he had written it today). Still thought Brendon Frazier was effective in Noyce's bent on the story.

BTW, if you haven't seen an actor who appears to be more of a statue than a real person, you haven't seen some of the films I've seen. Sculpture being thrown into the arena made me think of Robert De Niro at the bar in "Goodfellas" when he stood frozen and there was no speech. You knew what he was thinking. Too much of a strech for you, lr? You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

32 Short Films about Glenn Gould comes to mind as an impressionistic rather than a narrative film. Loved it!!!

Robert de Niro, one of America's great actors, walking away, silently, at the end of The Last Tycoon gives us one of the film's most telling moments.

I maintain that Brendan Frasier's height and weight as well as his geee whiz youthfulness made him an excellent choice for the role of Alden Pyle, described as 30 in Greene's novel. Tim Robbins, a good actor and better writer, is too old for the role of Pyle. Never good looking, Robbins is not aging particularly well.

It is difficult to tell how old Greene meant Fowler to be. Fowler refers to his age several times in the novel and Pyle calls him an aging European. ( Aside: I think Pyle's use of Fowler's Christian name Thomas was a kind of passive aggression.) In a discussion of women in general and Phuong in particular, another man is mentioned, a 50 year old. While it might be that Greene wishes us to assume Fowler himself is 50 through reference to this third man, I feel Greene saw him as slightly older still...55, but, more likely, 60. Michael Caine is in his late 60s but I don't think he is 70.

Agreed re Brendan Fraser being perfect in the role. As you say, plainoldme, his size and youthful good looks suited him well as a seemingly naive and well-meaning character. And yes, since the issue of age has been brought up re Micheal Caine, Tim Robbins is clearly too old for the part Fraser played...

Lightwizard, I am not saying anything as obviously dumb as "film is the same as the written word." What I AM saying is that narrative film and narrative fiction share many, many conventions-- most fundamentally,they both convey dramatic action involving characters and dialogue. And they do not do so as diffreently as you seem to think. That is why novelist Graham Greene was able to morph into screenwriter extraordinaire Graham Greene when he wrote THE FALLEN IDOL and THE THIRD MAN directed by Carol Reed. A good novelist is able to convey a great deal through what we might call camera-eye description, which equates to the shots in a movie. Greene does this constantly in the novel of THE QUIET AMERICAN, although Philip Noyce was too obtuse to use much of the material handed to him in this way by Greene. If you want to read a novelist whose work reads like movie scenarios, look at Conrad, "Heart of Darkness" in particular--he actually describes pans and zooms and dolly shots before they were ever invented. Thomas Hardy often does the same. Good novelists visualize. Good filmmakers dramatize. Philip Noyce did neither, alas.

From page 17 of the Penguin edition of THE QUIET AMERICAN:
"You know all I can tell you about Pyle. Age thirty-two, employed in the Economic Aid Mission, nationality American."

Tim Robbins is certainly NOT too old to play a 32 year old man. Once again D'Artagnan blunders in and gets the facts wrong.

Granted "The Third Man" was a great script but Carol Reed's atmospheric visualization is what made the film. Of course, fiction writers describe scenes but few of them are that successful at it and very view of them were ever successful at writing scripts for movies. Faulkner was involved writing the script for "Land of the Pharoahs," but also wrote "The Big Sleep" and "The Southerners." Doesn't prove a thing to me. The great films even though one knows the story, dialogue and characters can be watched again and again just for the appreciation and enjoyment of the act of filmmaking, the composition of the scenes, the blending of the musical score, the sounds, et al. "Days of Heaven" and "Chinatown" are two of those films and certainly it is because the director worked closely enough with the cinematographer and it was a mating made in Heaven I(or, at least, close enough but not close enough to cause any rumors! ) In Polanski's case, it was because he worked to closely with his models.

Stage production is the closest to filmmaking as an art. It would be interesting to compare all the films adapted from stage productions with those adapted from novels. Few stage plays are adapted from books -- Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" did make it onto the dramatic stage and onto the musical stage. I end by saying I don't agree that fictional writer, especially novelist, write narrative which is anything like what a screenwriter produces. The beauty of reading a great piece of fiction is the suggestive quality of letting the reader imagine scenes described in very few words. Leave the "talent" of writing novels that seem to have a purpose of selling to Hollywood as a film to Stephen King and his ilk.

You, as a writer, Larry, might find reading a different experience from a non-writer. I don't believe many great fiction writers read very much of anyone else's works. It's like an artist constantly studying someone else's painting. Not the best idea.

I could barely buy Tim Robbins as a thirty-two years old -- his age as accentuated is rather clownish face and he may have come off well in this interpretation of Pyle but maybe not. Are you certain there isn't some bias of not liking an actor at all, perhaps for what films he has ended up in over the years? Robbins has also been in some embrassing failures. I always thought he was a better writer than an actor. What was that thriller involving computer genius Ryan Phillipe? I'm trying to forget.

Then we go back to the fundamental reason why Bud Schulberg called screenwriters "schmucks with Underwoods."

Lightwizard, that has to be the most slovenly, illogical, and nonsensical post I have read from you yet! "I don't believe very many great fiction writers read very much of anyone else's works." Bullfeathers! I have visited Tolstoy's house in the Russian countryside, and do you know what was hanging over his writing desk? A portrait of Dickens. Tolstoy read Dickens and Thackeray, not to mention Balzac and Scott, throughout his life. Great writers are all, uniformly, great readers. Hemingway read KING LEAR every year. I could go on and on but your point is so foolish it doesn't deserve a lengthy rebuttal.

Tim Robbins is a bad actor? Did you happen to see him in THE PLAYER, SHORT CUTS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, ARLINGTON ROAD? He is a terrific actor with the right material.

The line about screenwriters being "schmucks with Underwoods" comes from Harry Cohn, NOT Budd (correct spelling) Schulberg, who being a fine screenwriter himself would never have maligned his craft.

Stage production actually is not that close to filmmaking. That is why relatively few plays make satisfying movies, compared to novels. Plays don't translate as well to film because they are (if they are any good) conceived for the limitations and conventions of theater--none of which film is bound by. If you had ever worked in the theater (as perhaps you have) you would know what a huge difference there is in the 2 media.

I maintain that novelists DO write visual narrative all the time. I repeat my examples of Conrad and Hardy since you didn't bother to deal with them in your post. Graham Greene himself, in THIS GUN FOR HIRE, essentially wrote a movie treatment masquerading as a damn good suspense novel. That's why Hollywood snapped it up immediately and shot it with Alan Ladd.

Actually the "scmucks with Underwoods" comment has also been attributed to Jack Warner -- I don't believe anyone knows how who actually originated it. George Cukor and Walter Strom told me Schulberg originated the quip. Apologize for leaving out a "d" on his name -- terrible of me. Almost as bad as ending a sentence in a preposition.

I still stand by my comment that although I'm sure great writers have read other great literature, I imagine they spent most of their time writing it, not reading it.

I don't like novelist who get wrapped up in so much narrative description that the work becomes overwrought. Scriptwriters give indication of action and environment but leave a lot up to the director in presenting the scene with a set or outdoor background that is likely not always the same thing they had in mind. I'm certain their pride gets the best of them when a director drastically changes something and I'm also sure it would be unlikely anyone would ever know which would have been better.

Characterizing my comments as foolish or nonsense is your opinion and I naturally don't agree. Your comment of Tolstoy having pictures on his wall is not proof of anything and sounds more like to old quip about someone with a large library who was asked if he had read all those books, "Yes, I've read every last word. I opened each book and read the last word.

Incidentally, where's your book at Amazon or is it not written under Larry Richette? I'd enjoy reading something by you unless you're concerned I might dislike it.

Alice Walker tried her hand at writing a screen play for The Color Purple but couldn't get interested in the project: she had already addressed that material and those issues and was no longer interested in solving the problem AGAIN.

Screenwriting does involve creating an atmosphere but relies much more heavily upon creating dialogue than does the writing of most novels.

At least one novelist -- a storyteller, not a literary novelist -- Elmore Leonard consciously visualizes his characters, scenes and plots, which is how he explains the number of his books turned into movies.

Sometimes, a movie surpasses the book it is based on, in the case of the Fay Weldon novel made into a movie with Roseanne and Meryl Streep, or Maeve Benchley's Circle of Friends. Other times, a movie clarifies something in the book. Even James Joyce was helped a bit by the addition of one line in the film version of The Dead!

My novel is being published in June and you can find it on Amazon then, under my full name of Lawrence Richette.

You may not LIKE novelists who describe visually, but novelists do that all the time. One famous example is the opening passage of Scott Fitzgerald's TENDER IS THE NIGHT which describes the beach and the hotel on the Riviera where much of the novel takes place. Faulkner does it constantly too, see LIGHT IN AUGUST for examples.

What I said about Tolstoy was not just about his picture of Dickens but about his reading habits. Ditto for Hemingway's. You seem to ignore everything in my posts that you can't deal with. Another writer who was a great lifelong reader was Thomas Mann, who wrote literary criticism into his seventies. Here is a contemporary writer whom I admire, Philip Roth, talking about the importance of reading to him:
"I read all the time when I'm working, usually at night. It's a way of keeping the circuits open. It's a way of thinking about my line of work while getting a little rest from the work at hand. It helps inasmuch as it fules the overall obsession."--Paris Review Writers At Work Interview

I don't care for fiction writers who describe the scene to the point that it leaves almost nothing to the reader's imagination, as if they are condescending about ther reader's ability to imagine. The opening of "Tender is the Night" is exquisite descriptive narrative and it still leaves a lot to the imagination, which means a film director would have his own version of what the hotel would look like. There is still a non-objective approach to the description, a kind of poetry. Reminds me of "The White Hotel" which is described in somewhat the same way. Faulkner's description while some times detailed never annoyed me but it also never impressed me as much as Sinclair Lewis in "Main Street."

The pictures on the wall struck me funny and Hemingway reading one Shakespeare play made me break out laughing. I'm sure there are authors who read a lot like Roth, however it's not clear what he's reading although I doubt that it's "Dick and Jane."

The production designer and art director of a film is not as appreciated as they should be. Often a director has no real visual artistic sense -- he needs someone else to give the film it's ambience. Ridley Scott is a notable exception and there's a good reason for that.

I really laud the look of "The Quiet American," miles ahead of the older version -- the judicious use of color and the composition of many of the scenes are inspired. I did have the feeling Noyes left the actors pretty much to their own devices and although Frazier has done really nothing like his performance is "School Ties," he was able to fit into the mold of the character in the film. He doesn't resemble the character in the book exactly but he's certainly better than Audie Murphy.

Anyway, all this discussion of what writers do is sidetracking the subject and unless one is actually sleeping with the writer, I doubt that one could formally attest to their reading habits.

I'll look forward to your book release.

The earlier version of THE QUIET AMERICAN was shot in black and white so comparing it to the current version visually is rather nonsensical.