The Quiet American (1958 film)

The Quiet American is a 1958 American film and the first film adaptation of Graham Greenes bestselling novel of the same name, and the first major American attempt to deal with the geopolitics of Indochina. It was written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and stars Audie Murphy, Michael Redgrave, and Giorgia Moll. It was critically wellreceived, but was not considered a box office success.

In Saigon in 1952, as Vietnamese insurgents are delivering major strikes against the French colonial rulers, an innocent and enigmatic young American economist Audie Murphy, who is working for an international aid organization, gets caught between the Communists and the colonialists as he tries to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. By promising marriage, he steals away a young Vietnamese woman Giorgia Moll from an embittered and cynical English newspaperman Michael Redgrave, who retaliates by spreading the word that the American is actually covertly selling arms to the antiCommunists.The Quiet American started filming in Saigon on January 28, 1957, then moved to Rome, where shooting finished in late April 1958., It was the first time a feature film was shot in Vietnam. The crew had some difficulty filming there they had to avoid shooting at noon because of the harsh shadows, they had trouble receiving permission to shoot inside a Buddhist temple because of moons phase, and they inadvertently helped a political protest take place that would otherwise have been shut down by the police, because the authorities assumed it had been staged for the film. Audie Murphy fell ill with appendicitis during a weekend shopping trip to Hong Kong and had to be operated on. ........

Source: Wikipedia