The Quiet American

I saw The Quiet American on the TCM schedule as part of the spotlight on reporters, and since I got it on DVD last year, I decided to watch the DVD to do a full-length post here.

The movie starts off at Tet, the Vietnamese New Year celebrations, in Saigon circa 1952. This was when French Indochina was still a thing, divided into several provinces, but there was a war for independence going on that eventually drove the French out in 1954. Anyhow, during this particular celebration, a dead body washes up in the river. Apparently, the dead man was a westerner, the titular American, so a British journalist named Fowler (Michael Redgrave) who knew the American is brought in for questioning by the police.

Fowler flashes back to an early meeting with the American (whose name is never given, and is played by Audie Murphy). While Fowler and a lot of the other westerners in Saigon had grown cynical, our American is a fresh, unused mind who doesn't know the difference between an ism and a kangaroo. He works not for the US government, but for one of those organizations that is supposedly providing relief aid, but may in fact be doing something else. Meanwhile, the American meets a local woman Phuong (Girogia Moll) and falls in love with her. This is a problem in that Phuong is Fowler's mistress; further complicating things is that Fowler has an estranged wife back home who isn't going to grant him a divorce.

Fowler covers the Communist insurgency as a reporter -- and keeps bumping into the American, who somehow seems to be everywhere and knows everyone or something like that. It leads Fowler to investigate, helped by Mr. Heng (Richard Loo) who knows something of what is going on, but leaves it to Fowler to fill in the blanks. Apparently one of the shipments the American's organization had sent was opened, revealing barrels of a plastic used for injection molding, which means the American is doing something far more serious.

I have to admit that I didn't care for The Quiet American as much as many other reviewers seem to. I found it talky with a whole lot of nothing going on, and I found the expats to be largely as tiresome as the ones in Soldier of Fortune which I watched not too long ago. The love triangle didn't particularly interest me, either. Audie Murphy definitely has a different role here than he essayed in most of his movies, and he does about as well as I think he could have considering that I didn't feel the screenplay helped his enigmatic character. Redgrave is better, but that shouldn't come as a surprise.

Some of the shooting was done in Vietnam -- the movie was filmed in 1957 and released a year later, so this is when South Vietnam was solidly pro-Western. That shooting is definitely a plus, although it would have been nice to see it in color. The rest of the movie was shot in Italy, which is why you have an Italian actress playing a Vietnamese woman.

Considering everybody else's glowing reviews, this is probably one you should watch for yourself. The DVD I bought isn't very expensive, so even if you don't like it, you're not out much money.