InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

paengmanila I read the book and saw the 2002 film version. This film is a partial misreading of the book, and the 2002 version is much better. In terms of acting, characterization, and other film elements, this movie does very well, though.

SnoopyStyle It's 1952 Vietnam. The French are helping the locals fight the communist insurgents. They find the dead body of Alden Pyle (Audie Murphy). Thomas Fowler (Michael Redgrave) sees it but doesn't tell young Vietnamese girl Phuong (Giorgia Moll) who is desperately waiting for Alden. Inspector Vigot (Claude Dauphin) questions Fowler who tells him that Pyle was a quiet American. There was a love triangle between Phuong, world-weary Brit Fowler and wide-eyed do-gooder Pyle from a private aid organization. The movie is told in flashback as Pyle and Fowler meet a few months before. Pyle is importing plastics to replace production in China. Pyle wants to marry Phuong making Fowler jealous.There is no excuse for changing the Graham Greene novel 180 degrees. They should have the decency to change the title although it's understandable in the Hollywood red scare era. Also it's still a time when white people play Hollywood lead ethnic characters. On the other hand, there are some good qualities. Redgrave is doing solid work. He gets that perfect cynicism. It also has some scenes in Vietnam which is very rare at the time. This has some of the murky morality but it turns that murkiness on its head. This has some good stuff but it is not Graham Greene's book.

writers_reign I had two reasons for buying this DVD; my admiration for respectively Michael Redgrave and Joe Mankiewicz. Whilst my Redgrave collection has many gaps I own all but three of the films directed by Mank, The Late George Apley, Escape, and There Was A Crooked Man, which I wouldn't particularly want. As it happened The Quiet American offered a bonus in the shape of Claude Dauphin, which increased its rating for me. Mank himself has referred to it as a bad film but any film with Michael Redgrave can't be totally bad and had Mank been able, as he wanted, to sign Monty Clift for the role of Pyle it would have been several degrees better than it is, Redgrave versus Audie Murphy is not unlike Federer versus John Lloyd. Graham Greene produced his best fiction in the thirties and early forties so that The Quiet American dates from th years he was phoning it in so the fact that he was dissatisfied with the film is neither here nor there. What I take away from the film is yet another brilliant performance from Redgrave plus some tasty cat-and-mousing between him and Dauphin, not bad for a few quid.

sddavis63 Personally, I thought this movie never really found its direction. One of the advantages of a novel (this is based on one by Graham Greene) is that it can go in many different directions successfully and work very well because the written word allows for a much fuller depiction of what's happening. If you translate the novel into a movie, though, you're dealing with a more limited medium and it's a lot harder to make multiple story lines work. So - what was this? Part Cold War thriller, part murder mystery, part romance, with various other things thrown in, mixed together and ending up as mush.There were parts of this that I enjoyed. Generally, I thought that Peter Redgrave as Fowler (a middle aged, jaded British journalist) and Audie Murphy as "The American" put on pretty decent performances, I appreciated the look (somewhat limited but still present) at Vietnamese culture, and I also appreciated the portrayal of the very early years of the Vietnam War, when it was still the French dealing with a Communist insurgency in what was then an integral part of their Empire. It was an interesting look at that aspect of the Cold War. Not really anti-Communist, as one might expect from the era, but somewhat anti-everything. In that sense, the movie took on Fowler's jaded personality. Starting with the American's murder, the story revolves around the search for the killer and I didn't find that part to be particularly interesting. Unfortunately, that's the bulk of the movie. Woefully underused and under-appreciated, I thought, was Giorgia Moll as Phuong, the young Vietnamese girl who becomes a love interest to both Fowler and the American. One wonders why an Italian born actress was cast as a Vietnamese (not a single Asian actress was around in 1958?) but more disappointing was that she had little to do except sip her ever-present milkshakes.Frankly, I found most of this dreadfully boring. 3/10