The Quiet American

In 1952 Saigon, during the First Indochina War, British journalist Thomas Fowler has settled into a comfortable arrangement with a young Vietnamese woman, Phuong, even though he has a wife in England who refuses to divorce him. Their life together is unsettled by the arrival of Alden Pyle, a young, idealistic American attached to a medical aid mission, who begins courting Phuong. Fowler's irritation at his rival gives way to something more serious when he comes to believe that Pyle is not the well-meaning innocent he appears to be, and that the American may be tied to bombings in the city. The story moves between the rivalry over Phuong and Fowler's growing suspicions about the true nature of Pyle's work.

The film is an American production directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also wrote the screenplay and produced it with Vĩnh Noãn and Michał Waszyński. It was the tenth film he directed, following Guys and Dolls in 1955 and preceding Suddenly, Last Summer in 1959. The cast is led by Michael Redgrave as Fowler, Audie Murphy as the American, Claude Dauphin as Inspector Vigot and Giorgia Moll as Phuong, with Yoko Tani and Fred Sadoff in supporting roles.

Made on a budget of two million dollars, the film holds an IMDb rating of 6.7 from around 2,300 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 5.8 from a smaller pool of 34 votes, a split that suggests the two audiences have judged it quite differently.