THE QUIET AMERICAN Special Screening

Surface appearances are deceptive, and nowhere is this truer than in Phillip Noyce’s evocative adaptation of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.

Set during the French war in Indochina in the early 1950s, THE QUIET AMERICAN matches Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser in a battle of moral, political and existential dimensions. Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a lazy British news correspondent who has settled into a sensual lifestyle in Saigon with Phuong, his Vietnamese lover, enjoying colonial luxuries and priding himself on his non-involvement in a war that is on his doorstep. This changes when Alden Pyle (Fraser), an idealistic aid worker whom Fowler describes approvingly, as a “quiet” American, arrives in the city.

Few films deal with the growing American involvement in the region that was soon to explode into the full-fledged conflict that enveloped Vietnam. The dynamic between Fraser and Caine is fascinating to watch as these two accomplished actors navigate the paradoxes of Pyle and Fowler’s relation· ship. Aided by the beautiful cinematography of Christopher Doyle (best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar·wai), Noyce achieves an uncannily visceral evocation of a time and space charged with intrigues both personal and international.