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the unquiet briton
Sir Michael Caine fought hard to
save his latest role from the scrapheap. Anwar Brett profiles a winner.
academy profile
At an age when most men might be thinking of slowing down, Sir Michael Caine seems busier than ever, and the roles he plays are as good as any in his long and illustrious screen career.
But the 69 year old’s latest, acclaimed per- formance in Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American, may have never even seen the light of day.
A combina- tion of distributor sensitivity and the rapidly changing political climate after September 11 meant that an adaptation of Graham
Greene’s prescient critique of post war American foreign policy was felt to be out of step with the pub- lic mood.
“The man in charge of Miramax is Harvey Weinstein,” explains Caine, “who’s a friend. I rang him when I heard he was going to dump this film in January, which is the garbage can of movies in America, direct- ly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.
“I told him that I felt the film was better than he thought it was, that there could be Oscar nominations for the director, the screenplay and – God willing – even I might scrape one. By the time the Oscars come around I’ll be 70. How many more chances
am I going to have to get nomi- nated for an Oscar?”
A successful trial at the Toronto film festival calmed everyone’s darkest fears, and the film went on to receive Weinstein’s full support.
Caine’s passion for it is not merely the selfish wish of an actor determined that his work should be seen though, it is more a reflection of his belief of work well done in an intelligent and well made film.
On the one hand a 1950s love triangle between an ageing Times newspaper correspondent, an impressionable Vietnamese girl and an ingenuous young American (Brendan Fraser), the story takes in the epic sweep of post colonial history and the rap- idly evolving political climate in south east Asia.
And just as the book eerily presaged the Vietnam War, the film offers an oddly contempo- rary insight into world events.
“I wouldn’t make an anti- American film,” Caine adds. “I’m one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans. I wouldn’t make an anti-American film but what it is, it’s anti- the people who took them into the Vietnam war and as I say to every American jour- nalist, by the time that war fin- ished there were 150 million peo- ple in America who thought exactly the same. They were riot- ing in the streets to get out. These journalists then say to me, ‘well, why did we go in then?’, and I tell them it’s because they didn’t read The Quiet American.”
Quite what Greene himself would have made of the film is anyone’s guess. He was a notori- ously harsh judge of screen adap- tations of his novels, something that Caine experienced first hand hav- ing starred in The Honorary Consul when the author was still alive.
“I met Graham then,” he adds, “and it’s true, he never liked any films made of his work. He didn’t even like The Third Man because Orson Welles wrote the scene in the big wheel, and so he told me in no uncertain terms he didn’t like The Honorary Consul.
“And he didn’t like the first ver- sion of The Quiet American either, because he wrote an article called ‘The Treachery of Mr Joseph L. Mankiewicz’. In it he wrote: ‘this is the first time a film director has ever used a film as a weapon to murder an author.’ So when Graham didn’t like some- thing, it got pretty hairy.”
Maybe Greene would be pleased with these results after all. He may even identify something of himself in Caine’s portrayal. And while Noyce’s film is by no means uncritical of America it is a balanced and thoughtful drama that reflects the times in which we live, and does so in a way that can only pay tribute to Greene’s insightful writing.
Before Noyce became involved Sean Connery was being mooted for the role of Fowler, the dissolute Times correspondent. But Noyce admits that Caine was the only man he wanted for the role, and the choice has clearly been vindicated.
“I just sit and wait for great scripts to come my way,” Caine shrugs. “Recently I did Little Voice, and Cider House Rules and then I got The Quiet American. Little Voice and Cider House Rules weren’t massive parts but here was a leading role with degrees of difficulty to it. This was a real chal- lenge. I thought, there is a God and he’s remembered my name.”
Photo above: Sir Michael Caine in The Quiet American and below with Director, Phillip Noyce (Photo courtesy Press Association)
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