Le Vilain Américain

It's 1963 and the United States is getting drawn into the internal affairs of a Southeast Asian country named Sarkan. It's got a Communist north and a western leaning south. It has a king ruling with a prime minister with the habit of employing a lot of his relatives in positions of authority.

What makes it a bit different from Vietnam where we were getting drawn in bit by bit is that Sarkan also has a charismatic leader who retired DeGaulle like after Sarkan won its independence from Japanese occupation. He's the key to solving the country's problems for better or worse.

Because of a past relationship with Eiji Okada who plays the Sarkanese DeGaulle, Marlon Brando has been appointed ambassador to Sarkan. Back during World War II Brando and Okada worked well together doing damage to the Japanese occupiers.

Problem now is that the Sarkanese see the Americans as occupiers and the Communists are exploiting the situation to the fullest. A road called Freedom Road that the USA is constructing has become a flash-point of resentment.

It all ends as badly here as it did for America in Vietnam though I certainly won't go into details. Brando delineates a very good interpretation of a Cold Warrior diplomat. We and the Russians fought for global primacy with competing ideologies for over 40 years. Neither superpower was particularly cognizant of the wishes of the countries that blood was spilled over.

Eiji Okada was a major star in Japanese cinema and this was his only English language film. He's an impassioned Sarkanese patriot who's exploited by some evil forces and only realizes it too late.

Smartest guy in the room and in the film is Pat Hingle who is the boss constructing the road. His wife played by Jocelyn Brando runs a hospital for the natives and is beloved. He offers the only real solution to winning the hearts and minds of the Sarkanese. Build a hospital somewhere where you want your bloody road to run and the Sarkanese will fall all over themselves building a road themselves to it. Too bad no one listens.

Brando and Okada make a fine pair of former friends and now dueling adversaries. Hopefully one day we might get an administration who is more concerned with winning hearts and minds all over the world. We might even realize some cheap oil in the bargain.

The Ugly American is still a fine film with some lessons for today's diplomats and military men.

Based on the very famous novel, The Ugly American shows the attempted spread of democracy with a cynical slant. When an intellectual idealist becomes the new American ambassador to a southeast Asian country, he had great hopes for how he can help the people and keep the great American dignity intact. As soon as he debarks from the plane with his wife, he gets a very rude awakening. An angry mob descends on them, and with very little American security, they barely escape with their lives. That's only the beginning. . .

My favorite scene was when Marlon has his first board meeting at the embassy. His coworkers are all lax and blasé, each unwilling to take responsibility for the security breach during the abovementioned crisis. He dresses the men down in a fantastic angry monologue about the importance of protocol. While every word he says is true, the real-world application of his theories don't always turn out. There are betrayals, rebellions, and near-misses around every corner.

I could tell from the overall tone, script, and intensity from the actors that The Ugly American was supposed to be a big mover and shaker. I tried really hard to get into the spirit of things, but I wasn't as moved or shaken as I expected. Since it's still a timeless subject, I think perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood. If this subgenre appeals to you, check it out. It's a classic.

Oscar winner Marlon Brando stars in this prescient drama from 1963 about a newly appointed ambassador heading to his old hunting grounds to broker a deal w/the people of Sarkhan (a fictional Asian country) as the West tries to bring industry (namely a road) to the masses. Arriving already under a cloud of controversy due to his past association w/the rebel leader, Eiji Okada, Brando has his hands full the moment he arrives as he & his wife, Sandra Church, try to broker a peace deal. When Okada & Brando break bread their casual drink & conversation make way for seething sentiments about the nature of the progress being made in the country w/both sides not budging from their positions. Okada's people & movement soon fall prey to Russian & Red China intervention which sets up the final conflict on the beleaguered road being constructed. Made just 2 years before America's entry into the Vietnam War, much of the dialogue could be lifted piecemeal to the rhetoric being lobbied from both sides for & against the war w/Brando, the consummate good looking cock of the walk, pleading his case in vain especially viewing the film 60 years after the fact. Also starring Arthur Hill as one of Brando's co-workers, Pat Hingle (who co-starred w/Brando in On the Waterfront) as the construction foreman & Brando's real life older sister Jocelyn playing Hingle's wife.

This film came out in 1963, just when the Kennedy/Johnson administration started to escalate the war in Vietnam. I am terribly dismayed and disappointed that the U.S government learned nothing from this movie.

In the first place, it is utterly and unrealistic to muddle into the political affairs of a country with very different culture and political background. Secondly, while we in the western world deplore communism, it is very silly and idiotic to treat it as a contagious disease, to be repelled and avoided at all costs. With our wealth, freedom of expression and using an open-door policy, we can show the people in the Communist countries or countries about to go Communist that our system is better and in every way offers people more freedom, pleasure and security.

I think this film should be shown whenever and wherever people come to see the Vietnam Monument in Washington

This film is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Burdick and Lederer, but departs from the novel in some significant particulars that I won't get into here. I think it is important to view this film as a period piece. Released in 1963 before the assassination of JFK and the escalation of the war in Viet Nam, the story retains a certain degree of naiveté about the role of the United States in the world and the perceptions of the United States that existed in other countries. This film would have looked quite different had it been shot in 1968 or 1969, by which time the country had long since shed any illusions about the nation's role in the world. In some ways, this provides a kind of still photo of the United States just prior to the Kennedy assassination and the tumultuous sequence of events that unfolded afterward. For that reason, this is a fascinating period piece that survives Brando's chewing on the scenery and a screen play that departs in unfortunate ways from the outstanding novel.