How Greene Is Our Worldview? the Fractured Souls That Inhabit Graham Greene's Fiction Offer Timely Lessons about the Dangers of Idealistic Zealotry. (Culture in Context)

McCormick, Patrick, U.S. Catholic

HOLLYWOOD HAS RESURRECTED GRAHAM Greene and perhaps not a moment too soon. A dozen years after his death the mid-20th century novelist who tracked the wanderings of the human heart through the borderlands of colonialism, communism, and Catholicism is Tinseltown's new wunderkind.

Greene's ghost, quartered in that realm of heaven reserved for agnostic Catholics, must be amused by this sudden turn, given that the author thought Hollywood misunderstood him even worse than Rome. Still, prophets are often honored posthumously, and a pair of modern filmmakers have doffed their caps to Greene with remakes of two of his best works.

First Neil Jordan brought Greene's The End of the Affair to the big screen in 1999 with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore, then Phillip Noyce offered a fresh translation of The Quiet American, starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. And suddenly a new generation of moviegoers is being introduced to the magic of "Greeneland."

Despite his distaste for many of the movies fashioned from his stories, Greene enjoyed a great deal of success from Hollywood. A former film critic, he crafted novels with a cinematographer's eye, and more than 40 films were made of his stories, …

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Publication information: Article title: How Greene Is Our Worldview? the Fractured Souls That Inhabit Graham Greene's Fiction Offer Timely Lessons about the Dangers of Idealistic Zealotry. (Culture in Context). Contributors: McCormick, Patrick - Author. Magazine title: U.S. Catholic. Volume: 68. Issue: 5 Publication date: May 2003. Page number: 46+. © 2008 Claretian Publications. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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