Vietnamese shadows, American reflections. (Film).(Far from Heaven; The Quiet American; Chicago)(Movie Review)

"I DIDN'T SEE any reason why the Englishman shouldn't be the dupe," Sir Michael Redgrave whispered as he puffed on his pipe. It was April 1973 and we were in his elegant suite at the Hotel Windsor in Melbourne. A few weeks earlier, I'd written to the famous actor asking for an interview to be used in my film courses on his work at Mitchell College of Advanced Education. Redgrave was not giving many interviews at this time but he'd agreed to see me as soon as the rehearsals for Voyage Round My Father were completed. The man who greeted me was a frailer version of the figure I'd been watching for weeks in preparation for this interview, slightly stooped from having been kicked in the back by Kirk Douglas during an over-enthusiastic fight sequence in the musical version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, softly spoken and slightly tentative.

It would be fair to say Sir Michael Redgrave in 1973 at once exceeded and fell short of my expectations. The formidable intellect I'd encountered in his articles and his book The Actor's Ways and Means seemed dulled. Alcohol? He was only drinking a light Dubonnet. A slight stroke? I couldn't be sure. Yet Redgrave was a gentler, more gracious man than I had expected; touched by my admiration and delighted I had devoted so much time to studying his films--"You know them better than I do!" Nevertheless, I was surprised by Redgrave's answer. I'd asked him about the change from the ending of the original novel in the 1958 film version of Graham Greene's The Quiet American. Dramatically Redgrave was absolutely right; it really didn't matter if Fowler, the English correspondent, was the dupe rather than Pyle--the CIA operative posing as an American aid worker.

But what about the book's politics? In 1973 The Quiet American was the book veteran correspondents in Vietnam recommended to their younger colleagues so they could understand the origins of the US intervention. For Greene the betrayal was completely justified, even though Fowler's motives in the book for conniving at Pyle's assassination by the communists were affected by both men's sexual rivalry over Phuong, the Englishman's Vietnamese mistress. The novel portrays Pyle as a dangerous blunderer, whose meddling had cost the lives of too many innocent Vietnamese.

Putting all this to Sir Michael might just have resulted in a lively debate, but I doubt it. I now know that his memory was gradually being eroded by Parkinson's disease; a few months later he discovered that he was incapable of learning any new parts. Redgrave was still a very fine actor, as those of us who saw him here still remember. But the blind barrister in Voyage Round My Father was to be his last great performance.

Still, why did liberal writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz change the novel's ending? Certainly it gave Redgrave as Fowler the …