It's fascinating when you consider this article:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/QUIETAM.htmsnipWhether or not Greene wrote Lansdale into his novel, Lansdale wrote Greene into the next version of The Quiet American, the 1958 film directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. Just as the C.I.A. in 1952 had orchestrated terrorist bombings in Saigon to incite a U.S. war in Vietnam, the C.I.A. and several of its front organizations used the 1958 film to resurrect those bombings, blame the Communists once again, build support for Diem's dictatorship, and savage Greene personally as the archetypal "intellectual" Communist dupe who menaced the democracy that America had built in Vietnam.
In March 1956, shortly after Mankiewicz bought the film rights to The Quiet American, Lansdale wrote to the director from his Saigon operations headquarters and, showing his skills as a former advertising executive, explained how to turn the novel into an assault on Greene and an advertisement for Diem. Although Lansdale acknowledged that Trinh Minh Thé had done the bombing and claimed credit for it in a radio broadcast, he assured Mankiewicz that no "more than one or two Vietnamese now alive know the real truth of the matter, and they certainly aren't going to tell it to anyone," so he should "just go ahead and let it be finally revealed that the Communists did it after all, even to faking the radio broadcast."
Mankiewicz cast Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II, as "The American" (he has no other name in the film), got one of Diem's henchmen to organize the on-location shooting, dedicated the film to Diem, and arranged for the first screenings to be benefits for one of Diem's main sponsors, the International Rescue Committee. "The American" is completely innocent and thoroughly heroic. In the car-bomb scene, it is not he but Fowler (Michael Redgrave) who is unmasked. The American arrives with medical equipment in a "United States Christian Mission" truck (the movie makes Murphy closely resemble Tom Dooley) to care for the wounded. When Fowler, who has been duped by the Communists, stands amid the carnage hysterically accusing him of involvement in the bombing, The American, fuming with righteous indignation, shouts, "For once in your life, why don't you just shut up and help somebody?"
Later, The American tries one last time to convince Fowler of the righteous destiny of the democratic Third Force. "I met a very prominent Vietnamese living in exile in New Jersey," he earnestly explains. "If all goes well, if Vietnam becomes an independent republic, this man will be its leader." This was, of course, the man actually reigning in Saigon in 1958, five years before another covert U.S. plot arranged his murder.
The terrorist bombs, according to the 1958 movie, have been set off by the Communists so that they can trick Fowler into helping them murder both the American and his vision of Third Force democracy. "It was the idea that had to be murdered," French police inspector Vigot tells Fowler. "To help assassinate the idea," Vigot explains, the Communists needed someone "gifted in the use of words," someone who would substitute "a work of fiction, an entertainment" for reality. As Fowler realizes how he has been used by the insidious Communists, he is reduced to a writhing, loathsome, and self-loathing stand-in for Graham Greene.
But now the tables are turned once more by the current film, which transforms that Lansdale-Mankiewicz fiction into a subtext, framing many scenes with similar composition while exposing the earlier film as a continuation of the 1952 U.S. terrorist conspiracy. Ironically, delaying the wide release of The Quiet American has added deeper layers of meaning, because in 2003 we understand even more about how terrorism can be used as a pretext for war, and who uses it.
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