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.

Red Dirt (1932)

Victor Flemming's Red Dirt is a saucy little pre-code romp about a no-nonsense plantation owner and a prostitute on the run. Although it is laughably tame by today's standards of "show it all and let the public sort it out," this was pretty risqué stuff for it 1932. For those of you who don't know, the Production Code was a lengthy set of guidelines and restrictions that governed what you could and couldn't show in a motion picture. It included such things as how long a kiss could last, how much of a woman's body could be uncovered and even moral issues such as the fact that all murderers had to receive their just deserts by the movie's end. The code was in effect from 1930 to 1968; although, the strictest version of it was in force from 1934 to 1955. Red Dirt is one of the films that helped create the stricter version of the code. It also helped make the careers of Clark Gable and Gene Harlow. This movie is all about sex. That's the only way to put it. Every scene drips with innuendo, as Harlow, Astor and Gable do a sexual dance so carefully choreographed that not one inch too much skin is shown, not a single scene of actual intercourse. But we're left with no doubt whatsoever about what's going on off camera.

Set in French Indo-China (Viet Nam), the Red Dirt centers on Dennis Carson (Clark Gable), the owner of a rubber plantation. Denny is struggling through a dusty, dry monsoon season, and not feeling any too happy about his prospects for the coming year. When the monthly supply boat arrives from Saigon, it brings with it Vantine (Gene Harlow), a prostitute who got in trouble with the law and decided to head up river until things cooled off. When Vantine first arrives at the plantation, Denny is angry at her for barging in and wants nothing to do with her. But there's no denying the electricity between these two. The air around them is practically crackling with it. Soon, with the help of the primitive bathing facilities at the plantation, Denny succumbs to Vantine's rather obvious charms, and they engage in a romance that's so hot it threatens to burn the jungle down. The fun is short lived though. The next supply boat brings a wet blanket to throw all over the party. Gary Willis (Gene Raymond), Carson's new surveyor, arrives with his sleek, sophisticated wife Barbara (Mary Astor) in tow. Well, Gary wastes no time in coming down with malaria, and Denny wastes no time trying to get Barbara to come to his room and check out his etchings, much to Vantine's dismay. By the time Gary has recovered, Denny has stolen Barbara from him. His only problem now is how to get rid of the useless husband. The answer presents itself in a tiger hunt. Denny will take Gary with him to hunt a tiger that's been terrorizing the locals. At the crucial moment, Denny will delay firing for just a second or two, while el tigre does his dirty work for him. Problem is that Denny's really a descent guy at heart, and he can't bring himself to let Gary take one for the team. In the end, Gary and Barbara head for home, and Denny and Vantine settle back into their scorching affair once more.

I love this film. I know I say that a lot, but that's only because I mean it. I love any film with Gable in it. And Red Dirt is one of his best. It lifted him above the pack of "actors" and made him a "movie star." Didn't hurt Harlow's career any either. Both of them are fun to watch as they trade insults and innuendos, barbs and embraces. Mary Astor is both aloof and alluring as the high-society gal who decides to go slumming withe her husband as visits the wilderness and leaves her lover with a bullet to remember her by. Nothing says "I Love You" like a well-placed slug! And Gene Raymond is appropriately sexless and ineffective as the cuckolded Gary, who's simply no match for Gable's virile manliness. After all, who's gonna want a surveyor who drops like a rock whenever anyone sneezes, when they can have the muscly guy who chopped a plantation out of the jungle single handed? Well, maybe he did have a little help. Like several hundred Viet Namese peasants. But still, you get the idea. Which brings me to another interesting thing about this film - it shows an image of Viet Nam from the Western perspective, when it was a French colony to be exploited for its resources. Always interesting to see what folks here in sunny SoCal thought was really going on in places like that back in the day. You can see where a lot of the world's current problems began. Interestingly, Red Dirt was remade in 1953 as Mogambo, with Gable reprising his earlier role, and Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly playing the parts of the prostitute and the society dame. I'll leave it to you to guess which of the two is the better film.

Red Dirt is unrated and is presented in its original black and white format. Running time is 83 minutes.