The Quiet American

Graham Greene was incensed by the way his novel's anti-American bias was shifted into anti-Communism as his quiet American arrives in Indo-China in 1952 with naive notions about a moral 'third force' helping to resolve the conflict. Vietnam history may have proved Greene right, but this remains a superior, strikingly intelligent film. Locations in Saigon help in lending an amazingly convincing atmosphere, and Mankiewicz is very nearly at his best in probing the murky relationship between Murphy's American Candide and Redgrave's tormentedly cynical British war correspondent, with sexual rivalry and unwanted personal obligations providing a quicksand basis for their ideological clash. Much underrated at the time.