Notizie

Joseph L. Mankiewicz was a Hollywood chameleon who ranged from thoughtful thrillers (The Quiet American), to acid character dramas (All About Eve) and Renta-ghosty romances (The Ghost And Mrs. Muir) with equal aplomb. Perhaps his most beloved film, though, remains his starry stab at the musical genre, 1955’s Guys And Dolls. It’s been spruced up and will be back on the big screen in time for all your Christmas sing-along needs*, and there's a new poster to help spread the word. Adapted from Frank Loesser’s Tony-winning musical, Guys And Dolls is the story of New York bad boy Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra), in deep with the gambling community and feeling the cops breathing down his handmade-suited neck. His fiancée (Vivian Blaine) also wants a ring on her finger. So what does he do? He makes a $1000 bet with Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando) that he can’t wow Jean Simmons...

The Late George Apley

"If I am remembered at all, it will be as the swine who rewrote Scott Fitzgerald," said Joseph L. Mankiewicz on numerous occasions, and though he does rate a mention in any Fitzgerald bio for his work revising Fitzgerald's screenplay of Three Comrades, he is also getting a sidebar retrospective, The Essential Iconoclast, at the New York Film Festival. Apart from including his several acknowledged classics, this also shines a light on some of the less celebrated movies in the distinguished Hollywood auteur's body of work.

In particular, The Late George Apley (1947) and Escape (1948) are seldom-screened dramas with suave English leading men, Ronald Colman and Mankiewicz favorite Rex Harrison, both supported by the delightful Peggy Cummins.

The Late George Apley supplements the emotion with a good portion of the wit Mankiewicz was so famous for. I spoke briefly on the telephone to co-star Cummins, best known...

When The Quiet American, Graham Greene's tale of political intrigue and waning colonialism in French Indochina, was made into a film in 1958 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, much of the novel's political insights and "ugly Americanism" were eliminated. Before U.S. involvement in Vietnam, there was little point. A new version by director Phillip Noyce, more than a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, restores the political context, but it's nearly as pointless. Years of movies, books, memoirs and TV shows about the war have made Greene's revelations about U.S. subterfuge in that country during the 1950s yesteryear's news.

Michael Caine delivers a tone-perfect performance as the story's narrator, a cynical and aloof British reporter grown accustomed to the privileges of a colonial lifestyle. Brendan Fraser achieves the creepy self-righteousness of the title character but not quite his stunning political naivete. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle and designer Roger Ford marvelously evoke the decadent pleasures of a decaying, sensual Saigon where boozing and whoring can obliterate the existence of jungle warfare. But the film feels dated both in its message and style.

Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan's script follows Greene's story to the letter. Indeed, the book itself feels like a novelization of a screenplay with its swiftly delineated characters, set pieces and exotic milieu. Caine's Thomas Fowler is one of Greene's Englishmen gone soft in a dangerous tropical clime. His cozy life gets upset by the arrival of Fraser's idealistic and, initially, fawning American, an aid worker who wants to do good and save people in the Third World.

Trouble is, one of the people Alden Pyle most wants to save is Phuong (Hai Yen Do), an ethereal beauty who is Fowler's mistress. On top of this sexual rivalry, the Times wants to recall the indolent Fowler to London. This energizes his journalism, if only to stave off the recall and continue his opium-induced existence. But an investigation into corruption and massacres in the field leads him to the revelation that Pyle is not as "quiet" as he lets on.

Noyce paces the film well and makes good use of his Vietnam locations, but the script does not strengthen the thin narration nor deepen the superficial characterizations that plague the novel. This is essentially a three-character melodrama with a colorful wartime backdrop.

THE QUIET AMERICAN

Miramax Films

Intermedia Film Equities USA/Mirage Enterprises/Saga Pictures

Credits:

Director: Phillip Noyce

Screenwriters: Christopher Hampton, Robert Schenkkan

Based on the novel by: Graham Greene

Producers: Staffan Ahrenberg, William Horberg

Executive producers: Moritz Borman, Guy East, Sydney Pollack, Anthony Minghella, Chris Sievernich, Nigel Sinclair

Director of photography: Christopher Doyle

Production designer: Roger Ford

Music: Craig Armstrong

Editor: John Scott

Cast:

Thomas Fowler: Michael Caine

Alden Pyle: Brendan Fraser

Phuong: Hai Yen Do

Inspector: Rade Serbedzija

Hinh: Tzi Ma

Running time -- 101 minutes

No MPAA rating...