Selected Documentaries & Movies on the First and Second Indochina Wars

Documentaries and Movies

 

It is the task of every student and teacher to analyze the listed documentaries, movies, and television series critically. Especially – but not only – some of the older productions in the chronologically organized overview are, according to contemporary standards, not politically correct, biased, and sometimes overtly racist and sexist.

We nevertheless included these films to foster important discussions in the classroom about the historical change in the construction and perception of war in film and its intersection with notions of class, race and gender. Therefore, all films need to be seen and studied critically as a reflection of the time of their production, including more recent movies. A good introduction into the study of the history of movies and critical film analysis is:

 

Especially interesting films for the subject of gender and war are marked with an *.

 

Documentaries

First Indochina War

 

(United States, PBS / WGBH/,1998) (53m)
Director: Jennifer Clayton

Part 13 of the PBS Peoples Century series, Freedom Now: Colonial Rule Is Overthrown in Asia and Africa, focuses on the anticolonial struggle in the second half of the twentieth century. After the Second World War, much of the world lived still under the colonial rule by imperial powers such as Britain, Belgium, France and Portugal, who all still had considerable holdings abroad. But starting in the 1930s, European control in Asia and Africa was more and more challenged. The struggle for independence took on added intensity after 1945 and Indochina with the First and Second Indochina War (1946–75) was one main region of this struggle for independence.
You Tube
PBS Website

 

(France, Morocco, 2008) (50m)
Director: Dalila Ennadre

This documentary, directed by Dalila Ennadre and produced by Film Documentaire France and Aya Films, describes the life of a Moroccan woman named Fadma who worked as a prostitute in a French military brothel during the First Indochina War (1946–54). Fadma details her life and experiences, asserting that she participated in the war just like the male soldiers did.
Trailer
Documentary website

 

Second Indochina War / Vietnam War

 

(United States, 1974) (1h 52m)
Director: Peter Davis

This polarizing yet acclaimed documentary on the Vietnam War won an Academy Award for Best Documentary and has been selected by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Decidedly anti-war but undoubtedly informative and well-made, Hearts and Minds details the atrocities committed in Vietnam with interviews from politicians, presidential aides, journalists, soldiers, and Vietnamese citizens.
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IMDb
Wikipedia

 

(United States, 1998) (1h 12m)
Director: Barbara Sonneborn

In this film, created over the course of a decade, filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn goes on a pilgrimage to the Vietnamese countryside where her husband was killed. She and translator (and fellow war widow), Xuan Ngoc Nguyen, explore the meaning of war and loss on a human level. The film weaves interviews with Vietnamese and American widows into a vivid testament to the legacy of war.
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(United States, PBS, 2017) (10 parts, each 1h 40m)
Directors: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part TV series, The Vietnam War , tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides--Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam. Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.
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IMDb
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PBS Website

 

Movies

First Indochina War

 

(United States, 1948) (1h 26m)
Director: Robert Florey

An American intelligence agent and Nazi hunter is on the trail of a former SS war criminal believed to be hiding in the French Foreign Legion in French Indochina. He joins forces with a French Intelligence agent investigating supplies of weapons to the Viet Minh from the Eastern Bloc. This movie was the first American feature film to take place during the First Indochina War.
Internet Archives
IMDb
Wikipedia

 

(United States, 1955) (1h 33m)
Director: David Butler

This fictionalized account of the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ portrays the battle through the eyes of four young French Army officers who volunteer to join the Foreign Legion in Vietnam in 1954 and give their lives fighting against the Viet Minh. Described as a jingoistic war film typical of the time in which it was released, Jump Into Hell nevertheless is bolstered by its strong performances and unique subject matter.
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(United States, 1957) (1h 37m)
Director: Samuel Fuller

In 1954, during the French Indochina War, a Eurasian female smuggler and a group of French Foreign Legion mercenaries infiltrate enemy territory in order to destroy an arms depot. The film is unique in its portrayal of race relations and its anti-racist stance, as well as accomplishing this with a multiracial cast, unusual for the time period.
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IMDb
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(Czechoslovakia, 1958) (1h 30m)
Director: Vladimír Cech

This film is the story of young Czech Václav Maly (Jaroslav Mares) who, having survived the concentration camps during the Holocaust and witnessing the deaths of his father and sister, searches for the lead SS guard, Wolf (Hannjo Hasse), who escaped from the Allies and is now fighting in the war in French Indochina with the French Foreign Legion. Maly joins the Legion and is assigned to the same unit as Wolf. The film portrays Maly’s quest for revenge against the backdrop of the battle against the Việt Minh in the final days of the First Indochina War (1946–54).
Trailer
IMDb

 

(United States, 1958) (2h)
Director: Joseph Mankiewicz

Based on Graham Greene’s bestselling 1955 novel of the same name, The Quiet American, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, stars Audie Murphy and Michael Redgrave as, respectively, an American economist and an English journalist in Vietnam, who are both involved with a young Vietnamese woman (portrayed by Italian actress Giorgia Moll). Although the original novel was a critique of foreign intervention and American exceptionalism, Mankiewicz’s film focused on the love triangle between the three main characters and turned the story into an anti-communist murder mystery that championed American power, which led Greene to disavow this adaptation as “propaganda.”
IMDb
Wikipedia

 

(United States, 1959) (1h 38m)
Director: James Clavell

The war film Five Gates to Hell, directed by James Clavell, tells the story of a group of Red Cross doctors and nurses who are taken captive by guerillas in a fortress in the jungles of Vietnam. Forced to serve as sex slaves by a local warlord (Benson Fong) and the head of his guerilla army (played by Neville Brand), the nurses eventually stage a revolt and escape into the wild. .
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IMDb
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(France, 1965) (1h 40m)
Director: Pierre Schoendoerffer

This French war drama, directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer, offers a close examination of French and Laotian soldiers near the end of the First Indochina War (1946–54). A French platoon retreats to Điện Biên Phủ to provide reinforcements for the Battle there, which starts in March 1954 and lasts three months, but it faces a dangerous trek through the jungle. Tensions between the platoon's leader, an inexperienced officer, and a sergeant, a veteran of World War II, subside as they encounter guerilla soldiers and disease on their way to the decisive battle.
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(United States, 1966) (2h 9m)
Director: Mark Robson

The war drama Lost Command, directed by Mark Robson, explores France's loss of political control and its military defeat in Indochina and Algeria through the eyes of a group of paratroopers. After suffering a humiliating defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in May 1954, Lt. Col. Pierre-Noel Raspeguy attempts to resurrect his reputation in Algeria. Loyalty among his group of paratroopers begins to fracture when one of them, an Algerian, joins the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Others grow disillusioned with counter-insurgency measures against civilians and the overall French colonial project.
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(France, 1992) (2h 39m)
Director: Régis Wargnier

Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film and directed by Régis Wargnier, Indochine offers an interpretation of French colonialism in Indochina through the lens of a French plantation owner, Éliane Devries, played by Catherine Deneuve, and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camille, played by Linh Dan Pham. They live peacefully together until the arrival of French naval lieutenant, Jean-Baptiste Le Guen. Camille soon parts with her mother to follow Le Guen, and the young lovers join the nationalist cause. After Camille's arrest, Éliane raises her grandson in France.
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(France, 1992) (2h 26m)
Director: Pierre Schoendoerffer

Closer to a documentary than a drama, this film draws from director Pierre Schoendoerffer’s personal experiences as an army cameraman in the 1954 battle of Điện Biên Phủ. It follows an American reporter as he finds himself in the middle of the 57-day battle between the French army and the Việt Minh, which finally resulted in the defeat and surrender of the French forces and France's eventual withdrawal from Vietnam.
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IMDb
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(United States, 2002) (1h 41m)
Director: Phillip Noyce

Based on Graham Greene's bestselling 1955 novel of the same name, this remake tackles the moral ambiguity of American involvement in the First Indochina War (1945–54). CIA operative Alden Pyle, played by Brenda Fraser, works to erect a third force between the French and Vietnamese, leading to the arming of rebels and their terrorist attacks in Saigon. An aging British reporter, Tomas Fowler, played by Michael Caine, exposes Pyle's work after Pyle falls in love with his mistress Phuong, played by Thi Hai Yen Do. This adaptation is more faithful to Greene’s novel than the first remake, made in 1958.
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(Vietnam, 2006) (2h 22m)
Director: Luu Huynh

The Vietnamese film, The White Silk Dress, directed by Luu Huynh, won the top prize at the 2007 Golden Kite Awards and was officially selected as that year’s entry from Vietnam for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. It centers around the love story of Dan and Gu, servants from two separate households in Ha Dong, Vietnam. Both have suffered most of their lives at the hands of their cruel French masters. The couple flee south soon after Gu presents Dan with a wedding gift - the precious white silk dress his mother had owned (his one valuable possession), while he promises her a proper marriage someday in the future. The couple arrive in the seaside town of Hoi An and build a new life, with Dan ultimately giving birth to four daughters. Despite struggling through immense poverty and hardships, the family is happy and fulfilled as long as they have each other, but the horrors of the encroaching war bring tragedy and threaten to tear them apart.
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Second Indochina War / Vietnam War

 

(United States, 1978) (3h 3m)
Director: Michael Cimino

In this acclaimed Oscar-winning war drama, directed by Michael Cimino, the Vietnam War shatters the lives of a group of friends from a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. While in Vietnam, the three friends, played by Robert de Niro, John Cazale, and John Savage, are captured and forced to play Russian roulette by the Việt Cộng. Two return home, but one, traumatized by his experiences, stays in Saigon and becomes a professional player. His friends try to bring him back home.
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(United States, 1978) (2h 6m)
Director: Hal Ashby

The winner of three Oscars, two Golden Globes, and prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Coming Home, directed by Hal Ashby, is the story of a woman named Sally Hyde, played by Jane Fonda, whose husband Capt. Bob Hyde, played by Bruce Dern, is fighting in Vietnam. Alone at home, Sally begins volunteering at a local veterans’ hospital, where she meets and falls in love with another man who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the very war in which her husband is fighting.
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(United States, 1979) (2h 27m)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Considered one of the greatest American war films ever made, Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is loosely based off the 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad (with the location switched from the Congo to Vietnam). The story follows a U.S. Army officer (Martin Sheen) tasked with assassinating a rogue Special Forces colonel who sees himself as a god (Marlon Brando). The film was nominated for several Academy Awards and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
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(United States, 1986) (2h)
Director: Oliver Stone

This Oscar-winning war drama based on director Oliver Stone's memories of the Vietnam War portrays the conflict as chaotic, disorienting, and disillusioning. Chris Taylor drops out of college to enlist and quickly finds himself out of place in Vietnam. The enemy is unclear to him, crystalized in a scene where arguments among members of his platoon lead them to burn a village of non-combatants. Such disagreements stem from two non-commissioned officers who have adopted two distinct strategies to survive. The young volunteer faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of men.
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(United States, 1987) (1h 56m)
Director: Director: Stanley Kubrick

Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick. An American soldier experiences the dehumanization of war from military training to the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. At Paris Island, new recruits encounter physical and emotional trauma as they become U.S. Marines. One escapes war through a journalism assignment, but he, too, becomes morally conflicted when faced with sniper fire. The crew included Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio and Adam Baldwin.
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(United States, 1987) (2h)
Director: Barry Levinson

Good Morning, Vietnam is a 1987 American comedy-drama war film directed by Barry Levinson. Disc jockey Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams), starts to work for the Armed Forces Radio in Saigon at the start of the Vietnam War in 1965. His irreverent humor, love of rock and roll, and reporting on censored news earns him the troops’ love and his superiors’ dismay. His friendship with a Vietnamese man, however, becomes a political liability.
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(United States, 1989) (2h 25m)
Director: Oliver Stone

This second Vietnam War film by director Oliver Stone, based on the biography of Vietnam war veteran and antiwar activist Ron Kovic, explores how an all-American boy becomes disillusioned with his nation and how a war-hungry nation injures its citizens. Ron Kovic, played by Tom Cruise, eagerly volunteers to become a Marine, but his second tour of duty ends when he becomes paralyzed from the chest down. After enduring apathy, disrespect, and detachment from his VA healthcare team as well as from neighbors and ordinary citizens, he becomes an active critic of the war through the Vietnam Veterans against the War.
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(United States, 1993) (2h 20m)
Director: Oliver Stone

Director Oliver Stone's third Vietnam War movie is based on the life of Le Ly Hayslip (born 1949) who also has a cameo appearance in it. Le Ly is a girl growing up in a Vietnamese village. Her life changes when communist insurgents show up in the village to first fight the forces of France and then the United States. The film follows her through a life of suffering and hardship during and after the Vietnam war. Eventually, she marries a U.S. marine and moves to the US with him. The woman's relationships with men suggests a symbolic analogy of  a female "Vietnam" and the male "United States."
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(United States, Luxembourg, 2006) (2h)
Director: Director: Werner Herzog

This epic war drama, directed by Werner Herzog, is based on the true story of U.S. fighter pilot Dieter Dengler, played by Christian Bale, who was shot down and captured by villagers sympathetic to the Pathet Lao during an American military campaign in the Vietnam War (1955–75). Dengler is tortured and eventually taken to a prison camp, and the film details his escape from the camp after learning that the guards plan to kill him and the rest of the prisoners. Following its cinematic release in 2007, Rescue Dawn was nominated for multiple awards, including a Golden Satellite Award and an Independent Spirit Award.
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(United States, 2017) (2h 16m)
Director: Angelina Jolie

Based on the memoir by Loung Ung and directed by Angelina Jolie, this film explores the impact of the Cambodian genocide (April 1975 January 1979) on children after the Cambodian Civil War (1967–75) and during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War (1978–89). Ung's family flees Phnom Penh after the Americans evacuate and the Khmer Rouge takes power. She becomes an orphaned refugee and later a child soldier, unwittingly inflicting violence on other children by planting land mines in the countryside.
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