The Quiet American
About the movie
Set in the early 1950s in Saigon, Vietnam, during the end of the First Indochina War, on one level The Quiet American is a love story about the triangle that develops between a British journalist in his fifties, a young American idealist and a Vietnamese girl, but on another level it is also about the political turmoil and growing American involvement that led to the Vietnam War. Fowler, who narrates the story, is involved in the war only as an observer, apart from one crucial instant. Pyle, who represents America and its policies in Vietnam, is a CIA operative sent to steer the war according to Americas interests, and is passionately devoted to the ideas of York Harding, an American foreign policy theorist who said that what Vietnam needed was a third player to take the place of both the colonialists and the Vietnamese rebels and restore order. This third player was plainly meant to be America, and so Pyle sets about creating a Third Force against the Viet Minh by using a Vietnamese splinter group headed by corrupt militia leader General The (based on the actual Trinh Minh The). His arming of The's militia with American weaponry leads to a series of terrorist bombings in Saigon. These bombings, dishonestly blamed on the Communists in order to further American outrage, kill a number of innocent people, including women and children. Meanwhile, Pyle has stolen Fowlers Vietnamese mistress Phuong, promising her marriage and security. When Fowler finds out about Pyle's involvement in the bombings, he takes one definitive action to seal all of their fates. He indirectly agrees to let his assistant, Hinh, and his Communist cohorts confront Pyle; when Pyle tries to flee, Hinh fatally stabs him. Phuong subsequently returns to Fowler, and while the local French police commander suspects Fowler's role in Pyle's murder, he has no evidence and does not pursue the matter.
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