The African Queen (1951)

Meet Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart). Charlie's a happy man. He's got it all figured out. Charlie owns a small steam launch called the African Queen. Charlie and the Queen make a living ferrying passengers, freight and mail up and down the Ulanga River in German East Africa. Charlie is living the good life...or so he thinks. Then World War I breaks out and everything changes. Suddenly, all of the non-German residents are enemies. When the Germans raid a mission run by the Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morely) and his sister Rose (Katherine Hepburn), Charlie comes to evacuate them. Unfortunately, he's too late to save the reverend, who dies of fever. When Charlie tries to take Rose back up river to safety, she comes up with a counter plan. She wants to sail downstream to Lake Tanganyika and destroy the Louisa, a German gunboat that plies the waters of the lake. Charlie tries to point out the impossibility of the trip: there's a German fort to get past; there are rapids; there's a dense swamp. Rose is adamant, though. They must do this for England. Reluctantly, Charlie agrees, and they argue their way down river. When Charlie gets drunk soon after they start out, Rose dumps all of his alcohol overboard. By the time they've made it past the fort and shot the rapids, both Charlie and Rose have changed. They begin to see each other in a new light. Yes, they fall in love. And the harder their journey becomes, the deeper in love they fall. By the time they finally - and miraculously - reach the lake, they are a committed pair. Charlie fashions crude torpedoes out of dynamite and oxygen cylinders, and they head out onto Lake Tanganyika to sink the Louisa. Unfortunately, a storm sinks the African Queen instead. Picked up by the Louisa, Charlie and Rose beg the ships captain to marry them before they are executed as spies. As the doomed couple say "I do," the Louisa strikes the half submerged hulk of the African Queen, detonating the torpedoes. The Louisa sinks, and Charlie and Rose swim off to safety.

Well, that - in a nut shell - is the story. It doesn't sound like much when you read it that way. You have to experience it. The African Queen is simply one of the finest movies ever made. Based on the novel by E. M. Forester, and directed by John Huston, it is the only movie for which Humphrey Bogart won an academy award during his long career. It is also a movie that nearly killed everyone involved in the making of it. The movie was shot largely on location in Africa, and dysentery, malaria, contaminated water and wild animals were a constant danger. The only members of the cast and crew who didn't get sick were Bogart and Huston who lived on a diet of baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Bogart famously said, "Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." Katherine Hepburn was so sick with dysentery during the filming that a bucket had to be kept just off camera for her to throw up in between takes. Now that's dedication. And that dedication brought forth a movie worth watching again and again. Bogart's portrayal of the lazy, drunken Allnut is one of the finest of his career, and his Oscar was well deserved. Hepburn is fantastic as the straight-laced Rose Sayer, who can't help but fall in love with her surly, pickled companion. It's fun to watch the relationship between the two characters grow and blossom into a deep abiding love. And the scenery and cinematography are amazing as well. It's just hard to imagine what Huston and his crew had to do in order to film this movie. They had to build a raft in order to float all of the camera equipment to get shots inside of the Queen when it was out on the water.

All in all, The African Queen is just a great visual feast, as well as being a whole lot of fun to watch. The movie is rated G, and it's filmed in Technicolor (it was, in fact, Katherine Hepburn's first color movie). Runtime is 105 minutes, and it's worth every second.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Mr. Chipping (Robert Donat) is a teacher at Brookfield Academy, a British boarding school. Unfortunately, he's not a very good teacher. None of the boys like him. None of the other teachers do either. None except Staefel (Paul Henreid), the German teacher. One summer, Staefel invites Chipping to come along with him on a walking tour of the Tyrol. Chipping reluctantly agrees. It is a decision that will change his life. While climbing a mountain in Switzerland, Chipping becomes lost in dense cloud cover and stumbles across Katherine (Greer Garson), who is also lost. They decide to wait together. They share sandwiches. They share a coat. By the time they are rescued, the die has been cast. When Mr. Chipping returns to Brookfield for the start of the new season, he brings with him Katherine as Mrs. Chipping. Katherine has a decidedly positive effect on everyone she meets. The other teachers go gaga over her, as do all of the boys. More importantly, though, Katherine changes Mr. Chipping. She softens him. She opens him up. Where he was once a strict disciplinarian, he now overlooks little infractions of the rules. Where he was once stern, he now begins to tell jokes. This, of course, has a marvelous effect on the boys. No longer do they fear him. Instead, they all like the person he's become. He is now Mr. Chips, the beloved schoolmaster. But life has more turns in store for Chips. With little warning, Katherine dies giving birth to their first child. The child dies too. At first, Chips is devastated. Then, he realizes that Katherine will always be in his heart. As the years go by, Chips guides many young boys through adolescence and into manhood. During World War I, Chips comes out of retirement and takes over as headmaster of the school, shepherding Brookfield through the dark days of the war, watching with growing sorrow as so many of his former students and colleagues march off to their death. Finally, old and frail, Chips too must shuffle off this mortal coil. While on his deathbed, one of his friends says that it's too bad Chips never had any children of his own. Mr. Chips replies that he had hundreds of children, and they were all boys.

Sam Woods' Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a sappy, sentimental film about the effect one school teacher can have on the lives of many pupils, and the effect those pupils can have on the life of that one teacher. It's also a film about redemption, as the unpopular Mr. Chipping is transformed by his love for Katherine into the much-adored Mr. Chips. Having never read the James Hilton novel on which it's based, I don't know how faithful this version is to the original, but it is my favorite version of this story (at least one other version was filmed in 1969, a musical starring Peter O'Toole). I love watching the transformative effect that love has on Mr. Chips. I also enjoy watching the friendship that grows between Chips and Staefel, a friendship that endures even when they are on opposite sides during the war. Robert Donat is wonderful as both the severe Mr. Chipping and the lovable Mr. Chips. They do a pretty good job of aging him down through the decades too. He's really quite believable as the young, the middle aged and the elderly man. Of course, Greer Garson is radiant as always as the gentle, loving Katherine who always sees the good in everyone. It's also fun to watch the parade of Colley's who come marching through the school - John, his son Peter I, followed by Peter II, and Peter III, all played by young Terry Kilburn. If you're in the mood for a good tear-jerking, feel-good film, then Goodbye, Mr. Chips is just the ticket.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is rated G. It's filmed in glorious black and white and has a runtime of 114 minutes.

Lifeboat (1944)

World War II. Battle for the Atlantic. A ship is torpedoed. Eight people scramble aboard a damaged lifeboat. They're a cross-section of American society, from a common sailor to a tycoon. Seven white, one black. One of the women - a bit unhinged from the London Blitz - jumps overboard after her baby dies and drowns herself. That leaves seven souls. This in itself would be a pretty gripping story. Seven people in one small boat pitted against the entire North Atlantic. Will they survive? Will they reach the safety of America? Or will they succumb to their baser natures, tear each other to bits, resort to cannibalism when they get too hungry? Most other directors would have taken that route. But not Alfred Hitchcock. A bunch of people in a lifeboat adrift on an angry sea wasn't enough for him. He throws in a little something extra, just to spice up the mixture a bit. He adds the enemy to the pot.

Lifeboat begins in media res. We don't meet the people in a cute little montage as they are boarding the ship that will carry them into the war. The ship's funnel is slipping under the water as the credits end. The camera pans across the sea, and we see the ejected detritus of human lives - books, crates, food, clothing, playing cards. Then we see the lifeboat, damaged but still afloat. In it sits Connie Parker (Tallulah Bankhead), completely incongruous in her mink and her perfectly coiffed hair, filming the spectacle with her hand-held camera. Soon she is joined by John Kovac (John Hodiak), a rough-and-tumble seaman. Others come soon. Stanley (Hume Cronyn), the radio operator; Gus (William Bendix), a stoker; Alice (Mary Anderson), a nurse; Charles S. Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), the tycoon; Joe (Canada Lee), a steward; and Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), the young mother who takes her own life after having survived the shipwreck. These people don't exactly like each other. They come from various socio-economic backgrounds, and they have been thrown together by the war. If they are to survive, they must learn to work together. And they might just do that. But then Willy (Walter Slezak) arrives. Willy came from the German u-boat that sunk their ship. Now he claims a place on their lifeboat. He says he's just a common seaman, but can they trust him? After all, he is a German and this is war. Willy soon proves his usefulness when he successfully amputates Gus' gangrenous leg, saving his life. After this, the others pretty much accept him as one of their own. After Willy saves every one's lives during a storm, they pretty much let him run the show. Eventually, though, Willy's true colors show through. He pushes the ailing Gus overboard and calmly watches as he drowns. When the others realize what he's done, they turn on Willy en masse and kill him. Not long after, they encounter a German supply ship. Just as they resign themselves to being captured, an American ship arrives and sinks the German ship. While waiting for the Americans to arrive and rescue them, another German climbs aboard their lifeboat and pulls a gun on them. He's quickly disarmed. He asks if they're going to kill him. "What are you gonna do with people like that?" Stanley asks. No one has an answer for him.

The lack of answers is one of the reasons that Lifeboat is the least known of all of Hitchcock's films, and it's one of the things that - to me - make it one of his best. There are no real answers to questions about hatred, intolerance, thuggery, genocide and the rest of the host of problems that beset the modern world. What are you gonna do with people who kill indiscriminately and - seemingly - for the fun of it? What are you gonna do with people who would rather hate than love, would rather look for the negative than the positive? What are you gonna do with war criminals? Can they be rehabilitated? Or will they always carry their hatred with them? Hitchcock doesn't provide us with any answers to these questions. He just shoves seven people into a leaky boat lets them go at each other. And the forces of democracy don't make a very good showing for themselves. First, they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. Then they abdicate all authority to their enemy, because he's strong and willing to take charge. Finally, when the leader's mask slips off and they see him for who he really is, they turn on him and slaughter him with a vengeance. This is a fairly accurate analogy for America's involvement in World War II. You could also say that it's a pretty good analogy for every dictatorship that has ever existed, from Julius Caesar right on down to Muammar Gaddafi. Dictators take advantage of fractions and infighting to assume control. Everyone sees them as strong, take-charge leaders and cedes authority to the dictator. Eventually, the dictator's actions grow so audacious that those who allowed him into power turn on him and destroy him. So, in Lifeboat, Hitchcock gives us a primer - and a warning - about dictatorship. And he wraps the entire thing up in an extremely engrossing film that takes place entirely within the confines of a single lifeboat.

Lifeboat is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white. Running time is 97 minutes.

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

Seen a good Western lately? It's tough these days. They just don't make `em anymore. Frequent readers already know of my love affair with Roy Rogers movies. Well, I'm afraid I have to admit that it extends to all Westerns. I'm just a sucker for them. But, as I say, they don't make very many of them these days. Fortunately, Hollywood has a rich history of Western movie making and a plethora of Westerns worth watching. And The Sons of Katie Elder is one of the best. Directed by Henry Hathaway, it tells the story of four brothers who come back to their home town of Sweetwater, Texas, for their mother's funeral. John Wayne plays John, the eldest, a gunslinger wanted in several states. Dean Martin plays Tom, the next in line, who went off and became a gambler. Earl Holliman plays number three son Matt, and Michael Anderson, Jr., plays the youngest brother, Bud, who their mother was intent on sending to college. Once there, they discover to their shame that their mother was destitute the last years of her life, living on the kindness of strangers. The brothers set out to determine who murdered their father 6 months prior to Katie's death, and they uncover a trail of deceit and treachery that leads back to a shifty gun-smith who cheated their father out of his ranch. The sheriff is murdered and the brothers are arrested. As they're being sent to Laredo for trial, they're ambushed. Much gun play ensues. Some dynamite is employed. Matt gets himself skewered. Bud gets shot. So does Tom. But in true Western fashion, the weaselly-eyed varmint what caused all the commotion gets his come-uppance in the end.

I first saw this movie when I was about five years old, and it's one of those films that has formed a part of my world view. In late-era Westerns like The Sons of Katie Elder, there's good and there's bad like in all of the best Westerns (movies not motels), and then there's the bad that sometimes does good for all of the right reasons. The Sons of Katie Elder is, at heart, a redemption movie, a story about how a bunch of boys who all went South can turn their lives around and do something good, even if it is just getting one of them through college and into a decent life. In this film, the Duke plays - well - the Duke. That's all there is to it. And Dean Martin pretty much plays the same character he always played, only this time he's wearing a cowboy hat instead of a tuxedo. Earl Holliman - several years away from Police Woman fame but several years beyond Forbidden Planet, puts in a serviceable portrayal of Matt. The weak link is Michael Anderson, Jr. - he overacts to the point of inanity. The rest of the cast is pretty incredible: George Kennedy as the evil gunslinger Curly; James Gregory as the bad guy, Morgan Hastings; Denis Hopper as Hastings' whiny son, Dave; even the squeaky-voiced Percy Helton as the local store owner. The film was shot on location in Mexico and Colorado, and the scenery is breath-taking - first clue that we're not in Texas. "Those are my favorite mountains in Texas," I said to my wife. But who cares. The geography of the cowboy movie has never been faithful to the true American west. Roy Rogers fought North Dakota bad guys on the same SoCal rock formations that James Kirk fought space aliens on decades later. It doesn't matter. If you're making a movie about cowboys and gunslingers and such, you've gotta have craggy rocks and mountains looming in the distance, even if you are in North Dakota. Or Texas. Or wherever. If you're in the mood for a good shoot-em-up Western, check this one out.

The Sons of Katie Elder is rated G. It's filmed in widescreen Technicolor and has a running time of 122 minutes.

l'Avventura (1960)

What would you do if your best friend disappeared? Search for her? Call the cops? Panic? All of the above? Sure you would. If you were a normal person, that is. But that doesn't happen in Michelangelo Antonioni's l'Avventura (The Adventure). When Anna (Lea Massari) disappears while she and her friends are exploring a tiny island near Sicily, her friends aren't exactly distraught. In fact, it's more like they're simply put out. How dare she go missing? Anna's friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) and her boyfriend Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) make a half-hearted search for her. They send for the police. Anna's father shows up. Even he's irritated at being called away from his important business for such a tedious matter. Soon, everyone gives up the search and goes home. And before the day is out, Sandro is putting the moves on Claudia. Anna is never found. In fact, she's quickly forgotten, as Sandro and Claudia go in search of fun and pleasure. "What?" you ask. "Can they be so thoughtless?" Well, yes, they can and they are. Claudia and Sandro check into a hotel together. Claudia is tired and wants to go to bed, preferably with Sandro. He, on the other hand, has already started to lose interest in her, and he heads downstairs to join the party that is already in progress. Come morning, Claudia comes downstairs and finds Sandro in the arms of a prostitute. She runs away. He chases her. In the final scene, Sandro sits crunched on a bench facing a stone wall, Claudia stands over him looking out to sea. You don't gotta be Freud to figure that one out.

And really, that's all there is to this movie. Someone goes missing and nobody really cares. Nothing much is done about the disappearance, and no one's especially concerned about that either. We never see, or hear from, Anna again, and no explanation is ever given for her mysterious vanishing act or her closest friends' bizarre behavior following it. Everybody just goes back to their wealthy, idle, bored lives. And in those last three words you have the entire crux of l'Avventura. Wealthy, idle people who are so utterly bored that they can't even raise an emotion when one of their own goes missing. All they can think of is finding something that they think will relieve their boredom. They don't have relationships, because those are apparently too boring; instead, they just have sex, and they try to make that suffice. They have big, empty holes inside of them where their souls are supposed to be. They spend their time grabbing anything that they think will give them pleasure and stuffing it into that empty space trying to fill it up. They might as well try to mop up the ocean with a sponge. Their boredom consumes everything they touch, like some stomach parasite that sucks all of the nutrition out of the food you eat before your body can use it. This is ennui (ahn-wee), a feeling of utter weariness and discontent that results from satiety, when everything and everyone bores you, when nothing in the world holds any interest at all, when you go through your entire life on autopilot.

Antonioni - like Fellini - picked up on the horrendous ennui and alienation that gripped Italy (and the rest of Europe) in the late fifties and early sixties, something that the US is only now having to deal with. A new upper class had emerged, professionals in their thirties and forties with lots of money and lots of time on their hands. They also had lost their moral bearings and were adrift in an endless sea of relativism and agency. They could do what they wanted and their money would protect them. But they were alienated from everything and everyone, even from themselves. They could have sex when and where and with whom they wanted, and never mind the consequences. Antonioni shows us what some of those consequences are as Claudia and Sandro struggle for something meaningful in a world where life itself has lost its meaning.

Gabrielle Ferzetti gives a strong performance as Sandro, striving for something without even knowing what it is. And Monicca Vitti became a superstar on account of her performance as Claudia, who seems to have a slightly better grasp on what's important in life. Even so, she's the one-eyed queen in Sandro's sightless world. And all of this is filmed against that stark, gritty black and white that is the hallmark of Italian cinema. The pacing is slow, deliberate, as Antonioni carefully unwraps the souls of his characters. Dialogue is sparse. This isn't a talky film; its an observational one. Claudia and Sandro are placed in one situation after another, each one fraught with enough ethical dilemmas to keep a first year philosophy class going all semester. Having lost interest in their friend's disappearance, what will the protagonists do next? Will they move on with their lives? Or will they remain trapped in the same tiresome, dead-end existence. If you aren't sure, I direct your attention back to the final image of the film. It speaks volumes without saying a single word. Therein lies Antonioni's genius.

l'Avventura is NOT RATED. While the film has no objectionable scenes, it does deal with adult situations that may not be suitable for children. On the other hand, it's doubtful that children would even sit through the 143-minute running time. You should, though. It's worth every second of it.

Tomorrow Is Forever (1946)

The year is 1917. America has finally entered WWI. Young John McDonald (Orson Welles) signs up to do his patriotic duty. His pregnant wife, Elizabeth (Claudette Colbert) isn't so sure that this is such a good idea. He tells her not to worry, that the war will be over in no time and he'll be back home with her. She's not so sure. Maybe she has a premonition. John walks out the door, never to walk back into it. Fast-forward twenty four years. America is on the verge of another world war. Elizabeth has been happily married to Lawrence Hamilton (George Brent) since John disappeared. She has two sons: Drew (Richard Long) and Brian (Sonny Howe). Brian is Lawrence's son; Drew is John's. Lawrence has raised him as his own son, however, so he doesn't know that he's not. One day, a man comes into Lawrence's factory to look for a job. His name is Erik Kessler. He's a chemist. He fled Germany with his young daughter Margaret (Natalie Wood). Lawrence hires Kessler. What nobody knows is that Erik Kessler is John McDonald. He was severely injured during WWI, his body crippled, his face disfigured. Instead of going home, he stayed in Germany. He didn't want to burden his young wife with a crippled husband. Better, he decides, if she thinks he's dead. He became a chemist, lived his life. Margaret was the daughter of John/Erik's best friend, Dr. Ludwig (John Wengraf), the surgeon who saved his life. When the doctor was killed by the Nazis, John/Erik adopted Margaret.

When Elizabeth first meets John/Erik, she finds him oddly familiar, but she can't place where she's seen him before. Besides, she has other problems. Her son Drew wants to enlist in the war. Elizabeth fears a repetition of the tragedy with John and refuses to let him. One rainy night, when Lawrence is out of town, Drew runs away with some of his buddies to enlist. Not able to reach Lawrence, Elizabeth turns to John/Erik for help. He goes out into the stormy night and catches up with Drew at the train station. He tries to convince the boy to wait until he has finished school before enlisting. After some serious arm twisting, Drew finally agrees and accompanies John/Erik home, still not knowing that the man in the cab with him is his true father. Later, John/Erik takes ill from being out in the storm. To his dying breath, he insists that he is Erik Kessler, even though Elizabeth knows that he is really her long, lost husband, John McDonald. Referring to Lawrence, John/Erik tells Elizabeth, "Here is the one you wait for. No other man is your husband." After John/Erik dies, Elizabeth and Lawrence adopt Margaret.

Irving Pichel's Tomorrow Is Forever is one of the finest films that Orson Welles ever made. Sure, he's great in Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, but he's never played a more tender role than that of Erik Kessler. He is simply fantastic. His character is a broken, sad man, and the depth of passion that Welles is able to evoke with just the slightest movement of his sad eyes is unbelievable. And Claudette Colbert is fantastic as Elizabeth, the woman whose dead husband walks back through her front door one day. As the film progresses, and you watch Elizabeth slowly figuring out who Kessler is, your heart aches for these two souls, but mostly for John/Erik. And that's due entirely to the strength of Welles' performance. George Brent puts in a strong performance as Lawrence Hamilton, the man whose entire world stands on the brink of destruction, and Richard Long is great as the hot-headed Drew, the young man who wants so badly to get into the war, not understanding - as his parents do - just how destructive war can really be. Natalie Wood (this was her 3rd film) is charming as little Margaret, who knows far more about the destruction of war than Drew does. And therein lies the message of this film and the reason that it still works so well today. Tomorrow Is Forever was made just as America was emerging from its second world war in less than three decades. Americans knew well then what Americans are just finding out again - war destroys lives.

Tomorrow Is Forever is rated G. It is filmed in glorious black and white and has a running time of 105 minutes.

The Quiet American (2002)

"I can't say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman's voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you're looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that's the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there's a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again."

Thus begins Philip Noyce's The Quiet American, starring Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler, a world-weary foreign correspondent stationed in Saigon, and Brendan Fraser as Alden Pyle, a young and idealist CIA agent working undercover to defeat the communist movement in the north. The year is 1951, and the French still control Viet Nam. Ho Chi Minh's communist forces are gaining ground, though. The French are losing their hold. But other people don't want the communists to take over Viet Nam. The Americans want to set up another government in the south to take over from the French. And that's where Pyle comes in. He's working to set up a third party, not French, not communist, who can take over when the French decide to leave. Pyle wants to establish a democracy in Viet Nam, and he doesn't seem too worried about how many people get killed along the way, as long as there's a democracy. Fowler asks him one of the most obvious questions: "What happens if you give them a democracy and they vote for Ho Chi Minh?" Would the Americans allow that? Pyle doesn't know the answer. But slowly, his belief in what he's doing begins to crumble as the body county begins to rise. Meanwhile, Fowler is beginning to think that Pyle and the Americans need to be stopped, not for the good of the French but for the good of the Viet Namese. He arranges with an associate who is connected with the communist underground to arrange a meeting with Pyle at a restaurant. Pyle never makes it there. Sadly, removing Pyle won't, as we all know, stop the Americans from getting involved in Viet Nam. It would take us another twenty years and over 50,000 American lives to learn that lesson.

But The Quiet American isn't really about any of this. While all of this political intrigue has been going on - and there's a lot of it - a love triangle has also been in the works between Fowler, his girlfriend Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), and Pyle. Fowler and Phuong live together. Fowler would love to marry her, but he can't. He's already married, and his wife won't grant him a divorce. Phuong's mercenary sister (Pham Thi Mai Hoa) doesn't like this situation one bit. She wants to get Phuong married to one of the rich foreigners, so there will be someone to take care of the family financially. And Pyle seems like just the man to do it. And he doesn't need a lot of encouragement. He's more than willing to steal Phuong away from Fowler, to save her from the corrupt Englishman. In Pyle's mind saving a country and saving a girl are one and the same thing. Of course, he's very gentlemanly about it. He even asks Fowler ahead of time if it would be okay for him to steal Phuong away. Fowler, thinking the guy is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, tells him to go ahead and try. So Pyle tries. And he succeeds, much to Fowler's great dismay. All of which throws Fowler's subsequent actions into a different light. Does he set Pyle up because of his political beliefs? Or does he do it because Pyle stole Phuong away from him? And are the two even separate? Is it even possible to disconnect the people from the country. Here are two foreigners fighting over a indigenous woman that both want to possess. Is that any different than two foreign governments fighting over a third country that they want to possess? Or is all politics personal, and vice-a-verse?

Based on Graham Greene's 1955 novel of the same title, The Quiet American is beautifully filmed, superbly acted, deliberately paced. For a war movie, there's surprisingly little war going on. Only two very short battle scenes, and one car bombing. The rest is politics and an achingly painful love story. And this gives me another chance to rant and rave about the rating system in this country. The highly secretive MPAA ratings board seems to have no criteria whatsoever for handing out ratings. The Quiet American is rated R. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. It says "for violence and some language." Did you see The Lord of the Rings Trilogy? Then you saw ten times more violence than this film contains. And as for the language, it was nothing compared to the language in most of the utterly inane comedies that come out every year with PG-13 ratings. Personal opinion? Americans don't come up smelling like roses in this film. In fact, America is shown as the country that caused the carnage in Viet Nam. Special news flash for those of you who haven't heard. We did. And I think the ratings board penalized the film for saying so. IMHO. Decide for yourself.

The Quiet American is filmed in color and has a running time of 101 minutes.