My discussion of Mankiewicz’s „Quiet American”

The February 2021 issue of A Sort of Newsletter – a quarterly published by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust – features my discussion of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1958 adaptation of Greene’s The Quiet American. It was first posted in 2017 on this blog as the second half of a two-part essay. (The November 2020 issue […]

Bogart, Bazin, Cosașu

Cu ocazia mutatului într-o locuință nouă, îmi trec prin mâini cărți de-ale mele pe care în ultimii ani le-am ținut depozitate în diverse locuri și pe care nu mi-am mai aruncat de mult un ochi – în unele cazuri, din copilărie. E cazul primei cărți de cinema pe care am citit-o – în anii ’80, […]

The battle over „The Quiet American” (part two)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1958 film version of The Quiet American was a polemical answer to Graham Greene’s novel – literary adaptation as (politically driven) literary criticism. More than that, it was an operation meant to “correct” the novel, to replace it in the public consciousness, to neutralize it: literary adaptation as propagandistic damage control. Like […]

The battle over „The Quiet American” (part one)

This essay is based on notes for a seminar I conducted at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Arts and Design) in Karlsruhe, Germany, in July 2016, at the invitation of Professor Andrei Ujică. Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American was published in late 1955 in the U.K. and in early 1956 in the […]