In this climactic scene from The Ugly American (’63), director George Englund‘s decision to cut to an overhead shot at the 4:05 mark — a shot that emphasizes the internal collapse of Marlon Brando‘s Harrison MacWhite character, the U.S. ambassador to the ficional Sarkhan, a stand-in for Vietnam — is the finest moment in an otherwise decent but dramatically plodding film.
Nonetheless The Ugly American, adapted by Stewart Stern and released seven months before JFK’s murder, when U.S. military assistance to Vietnam was relatively modest and restrained…here was a mainstream Universal release unambiguously stating that this country’s anti-Communist policy in Vietnam was largely based on ignorance and military bluster and doomed to fail.
Mostly shot on Universal sound stages, The Ugly American received mixed reviews and no Oscar nominations, and went belly-up at the box office. But it foretold the greatest Anerican foreign policy tragedy of the 20th Century.