The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

232 THOMAS A. BASS
was followed by a four-hour TV documentary aired in December
2007. French television producer Alain Taieb filmed a documentary
about a reunion at the Continental Hotel between
Pham Xuan An and Philippe Franchini, the hotel’s former
owner. One of An’s more intriguing roles was the part he played
in Australian director Philip Noyce’s remake of The Quiet American.
Instead of British journalist Thomas Fowler having two
men working for him, an Indian assistant and a Communist
agent, Noyce combined them into one man, Mr. Hinh. “He told
the Chinese American actor who was playing the role to come
see me,” An says. “He knew I was a guerrilla at the time who
worked in the city. I would brief him about Communist activities,
how we acted and what we did.”
Noyce, in the press kit released with the film, describes
how he decided to alter Greene’s novel. “The change was inspired
by an intriguing story that I heard of a very famous Vietnamese
patriot, General An. As a special agent he spent
thirty-five years working for the French as a censor, for the
Americans in intelligence, and finally working for Reuters and
Time magazine, while at the same time he was working for the
Vietnamese people as a spy. I thought this was a wonderful
character, this triple agent, so we developed the character of Mr.
Hinh around General An.” The press release goes on to describe
how Noyce and Tzi Ma, the actor who plays Hinh, “spent days
with General An during filming absorbing his history and developing
an analysis of the character.” One of the consequences
of writing An into the script of The Quiet American—of making
him both Fowler’s assistant and the Communist agent—is
that An becomes the assassin who kills CIA officer Alden Pyle.
Maybe this is an accident occasioned by altering the plot. Maybe
this is not an accident.
Whenever I am in Paris, I try to meet Philippe Franchini
for an afternoon drink at the Bistro des Amis near his
apartment on the Left Bank. The Vietnamese owner greets