The Quiet American

Thomas Fowler, a British journalist, has been covering the French War in Indochina for several years. He has a live-in lover, a young Vietnamese woman named Phuong. Fowler meets Alden Pyle, an American CIA agent. Pyle falls in love with Phuong when he meets her, so part of The Quiet American is a story about relationships.

But a larger part of The Quiet American is the story of good intentions and poor decisions as they relate to war. Both Fowler and Pyle are visitors to Vietnam and both have thoughts about the ongoing war and how it should be resolved. Others in the story are native to Vietnam and they have other ideas about the war and how it should be resolved.

The Quiet American is a brilliant picture of morality and intelligence and how the two combine to determine actions. It's eerily prophetic of the acceleration of the Vietnam War and the inevitability of the inability of intruders to resolve the conflict.