Friday | August 26, 2011 9:00 pm

The Quiet American

Screening on Film

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Audie Murphy, Michael Redgrave, Claude Dauphin.
US, 1958, 35mm, black & white, 120 min.
Print source: MGM

Mankiewicz opens his moody adaptation of Graham Greene's foresighted Cold War allegory with a cinematographically dazzling and almost dialogue free sequence that undermines his reputation as an anti-stylist. Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy are ideally cast as the world-weary, wounded cynic and the bright eyed zealous innocent embodying the conflict between Old and New Worlds that fanned the fires of the Vietnam War. Selected by Jean-Luc Godard as the best film of 1958, The Quiet American is a fascinating meditation on Cold War politics and intransient convictions that crystallizes the intellectual tendencies of Mankiewicz's cinema. – HG