Vietnam: Graham Greene’s The Quiet American 2002
Distributed by Chip Taylor Communications, 2 East View Drive, Derry, NH 03038 – 4812; 800-876-CHIP (2447)
Produced by ABC Australia
Director n/a
VHS, color, 20 min.
Jr. High - Adult
History, American Studies, Asian Studies, Film Studies, Literature
Date Entered: 11/09/2018
Reviewed by Cliff Glaviano, Coordinator of Cataloging, Bowling Green State University Libraries, Bowling Green, OHThis short film makes a strong case for the prophetic qualities of Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American, which predicted an unsuccessful American involvement in the Vietnamese revolution. Greene covered the struggles between the French and the Vietnamese Nationalists for a British newspaper in the early 1950’s and built his novel around a 1952 bombing in Saigon and his own experiences there as a journalist. Unfortunately, The Quiet American was widely discounted as anti-American and was given little credence as a scenario for further American involvement in Southeast Asia. A French Foreign Legionnaire who met Greene as he covered the war is interviewed as well as Philip Noyce, Australian film director, who currently is doing post production work on his film of The Quiet American shot in Hanoi and Australia for release in 2003. Comparisons are made between the 1955 Hollywood version of the novel, starring Audie Murphy, and Noyce’s forthcoming film.
This program has the quality that one expects from excellent television documentary productions. Sound and editing are excellent. A brief interview sequence with a wounded survivor of the Vietnamese conflicts lacks voice-over or captions, otherwise it is technically flawless.
This film will support general humanities and film studies programs. This is one of the rare instances that literature was able to predict history with some degree of accuracy, although political concerns (the Eisenhower administration’s support for the government of South Vietnam beginning in 1954) undoubtedly aided the labeling of The Quiet American as anti-American. Though teaching Graham Greene is probably not common in our schools and colleges, this film would serve to focus the beginning of an investigation of the influences of art on life, life on art, or whether, as Byron would claim (paraphrased), that “truth is stranger than fiction.” Much of this film’s utility will depend on how popular or critically acclaimed Noyce’s version of The Quiet American is when it is released.