Movies - Monday, October 5

The Age

Thursday October 1, 2009

CRAIG MATHIESON

The Quiet American (2002)Channel Seven, noonDESPITE recalling with sly pleasure his ��dark mornings�� in screening rooms during his tenure as a film critic in the 1930s, Graham Greene was rarely in favour of the cinematic adaptations of his novels. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1958 take on The Quiet American took such liberties with the storyline that Greene's comment was a single word: ��Treachery.�� You suspect he would have extracted more satisfaction from Australian director Phillip Noyce's effort. Not only did Noyce and screenwriter Christopher Hampton remain largely faithful to the plot of the film �� a love triangle in French colonial Vietnam played out with deadly consequences �� but they've captured the bittersweet air of noir-ish heat and moral erosion that characterised Greene's international assignations. Michael Caine is at the top of his game as Thomas Fowler, a British newspaper correspondent based in Saigon in 1952, who has the air of a man who has made his choices and does not want to be reminded of the cost. He's rightly wary from the start about Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), a US embassy attache with his textbook plans for saving the country, who also pursues Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), Fowler's restless mistress. Expatriate Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, a doyen of Asian cinema, beautifully captures the brightness of Vietnam, while always evoking the darkness creeping into the frame. The film does the same.