The director, a French veteran of the Indochina war (La 317e Section), returned to follow a platoon of American soldiers for six weeks at the height of fighting in Vietnam in 1966. The documentary discusses the background and fate of the soldiers and emphasizes how much American culture pervades the soldiers’ behaviors in the midst of jungle life and fighting.Read More »
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A chance remark leads three French naval officers to reminisce, together and privately, about the compelling young commander Willsdorf, nicknamed The Drummer Crab, recalling his exploits from the fog-shrouded rivers of Indochina to an attempted military coup in Algeria to his lonely, anonymous vigil in the North Atlantic fishing lanes nearby. Joseph Conrad would have loved this film, arguably the finest modern seafaring adventure ever made: a thoughtful and thrilling study of man versus the elements, where the past itself becomes an elemental force even more unyielding than the vivid Winter seascapes captured by Raoul Coutard’s breathtaking cinematography. In metaphor, Willsdorf’s fate is the fate of French colonialism, and only by pursuing his memory, through crashing waves and hissing spindrift, can his three erstwhile companions (a dying captain, a middle-aged medical officer, and a robust, veteran Chief Engineer) confront and endure their collective loss. This is a spellbinding film, rich in history and detail.Read More »
During a televised debate on the Algerian war in the early 1980s, Professor Paulet denounced the methods of Captain Caron, killed in action in 1957. The widow of the captain, Patricia, decided to file a defamation suit.Read More »
Director Pierre Schoendoerffer grippingly brings the close of the French war in Indochina to the screen in his portrayal of two officers and a group of Laotian soldiers serving under them in 1954. The inexperienced Lt Torrens, in overall command, has just arrived in Vietnam, and is reliant on his adjutant Willsdorf, an Alsatian who fought with the German Army during World War II. When the platoon is ordered to abandon a highland outpost and rejoin larger French forces, they soon find themselves behind enemy lines, outgunned, and in the path of a crushing Viet Minh offensive…Read More »