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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Michael Korda on Graham Greene's fears and fantasies
How do you transfigure Graham Greene for the screen? Many have grappled with the task, and, despite the occasional flesh wound, he has been treated fairly, if a little squarely--with far less mutilation, certainly, than someone like Henry James, whom Greene himself wrote about with such feeling, and who continues to be knifed at regular intervals by well-meaning producers. The best results with Greene were obtained by Carol Reed, who made "The Fallen Idol" and "The Third Man," although you could argue that, in the latter, the author's presence was outshadowed by Orson Welles.
The latest effort is Phillip Noyce's "The Quiet American," adapted by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan from Greene's novel of 1955, and set in Vietnam three years earlier. The hero, if he can be flattered with such a title, is Fowler (Michael Caine), a British journalist living in, and feeding off, Saigon. He is not a slouch, but neither would he sully his spirit with anything so vulgar as ambition. He loves the East; indeed, he runs through the particulars of that love ("Everything is so intense, the colors, the taste, even the rain") in an opening voice-over that sounds as if it were patched on to the movie at the last moment, and possibly sponsored by Vietnam Airlines. There is no need...
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