Four pipes of opium

In the early 1950s, the English journalist Thomas Fowler finds himself caught between the fronts of the Indochina War when he meets the young American Pyle, who is an employee of an American economic aid organisation in Saigon. Because of him, Fowler is in danger of losing his beautiful Vietnamese girlfriend Phuong, which reinforces his mistrust of his young rival. He believes that he has a hand in bloody bomb attacks in Saigon, and this has deadly consequences.

Four Pipes of Opium was filmed with its exterior shots in Vietnam. It is said to have been the first (western) feature film to be shot in this country. The interiors were created in the studios of Cinecittà (Rome). The German premiere of the film, which was shortened by 17 minutes compared to the US version, was on 31 October 1958.
While Graham Greene gave his novel a deliberately critical note of the USA, the highly nationalistic, highly decorated former World War II soldier and actor Audie Murphy was only willing to take on the title role of the nameless American in the film if the supposedly anti-American note would disappear. And so the characterisation of the title character in this Greene adaptation is completely different from that in the novel, and instead of criticising US behaviour in South East Asia, this adaptation has a strong anti-communist bias.
Like the original novel by Graham Greene, the film is called "The Quiet American". Even if the film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz ("The Barefoot Countess") deviates from Graham Greene's original at the end, it is still one of the most successful Greene adaptations: The evocation of an uncertain political climate and the portrayal of the two main characters in particular - Audie Murphy as Pyle and Michael Redgrave as Fowler - cannot be undone even by the film's mendacious, because propaganda-driven, ending. In 2002, director Phillip Noyce remade the Greene story under the title "The Quiet American". He slipped into Murphy's role and Michael Caine received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his brilliant portrayal of the unscrupulous journalist.