30-01-2016, 07:18 AM
There were two really good movies on TCM tonight with a Viet Nam theme. The first was Joseph Mankiewicz's The Quiet American (1958). This movie really mirrored many of the things we've learned from Kennedy research only in real time before they were further contexted by hindsight. It deals with a British journalist (Michael Redgrave) in French occupied Viet Nam who is having an affair with a Viet Namese woman whom he rescued from being a bar escort. The quite American is Audie Murphy who is supposed to be a independent American helping supply anti-communists in Viet Nam. He's a thinly veiled symbol of a CIA agent, though it is never quite said directly. He pretends to be a cultural analyst and importer but is really an importer of plastic explosive. This is a very powerful thing considering the movie is from 1958 - long before Douglass's exposing of CIA false flag bombings using plastique. There's a romantic drama going on within the movie but the political part is extremely well spelled out in how it covers the pressing tensions at the time. Claude Dauphin plays the French policeman who figures out the murder of Murphy. This movie is worth watching because it depicts events that we know the outcome of and how that outcome was gotten before it happened.
The second movie was a documentary called Hearts And Minds (1974). This movie captures the Zeitgeist of the anti-Viet Nam War movement in its prime. It is an absolute must for Kennedy researchers because it contains many of the main Viet Nam players right at the impasse of accounting for the war. Daniel Ellsberg makes the mistake of saying Kennedy lied about Viet Nam. I guess when Ellsberg was interviewed in 1973 he didn't have the knowledge that has been gained of late of Kennedy's real intentions towards Viet Nam. There's an interview with Rostow where he upbraids the interviewer for having the sophomoric nerve to ask him to preface his comment with an overview of how we got into the war. Rostow is too defensive. I think he feels guilty about something. One of the best remarks is from Detroiter William Marshall (RIP 2014) who was a Viet Nam vet who lost an arm and leg in a pitched battle only to become an anti-war organizer. He describes in perfect 60's jive how he and his men were cheering the arrival of air support only to watch the napalm canisters tumble right on to their own trenches and incinerate them. This movie does a good job of showing how the good old patriotic effort wasn't going to work in Viet Nam and how all the war coaches underestimated what they were up against. But it is painful to watch knowing the full political price that was paid and how it was gotten.
The second movie was a documentary called Hearts And Minds (1974). This movie captures the Zeitgeist of the anti-Viet Nam War movement in its prime. It is an absolute must for Kennedy researchers because it contains many of the main Viet Nam players right at the impasse of accounting for the war. Daniel Ellsberg makes the mistake of saying Kennedy lied about Viet Nam. I guess when Ellsberg was interviewed in 1973 he didn't have the knowledge that has been gained of late of Kennedy's real intentions towards Viet Nam. There's an interview with Rostow where he upbraids the interviewer for having the sophomoric nerve to ask him to preface his comment with an overview of how we got into the war. Rostow is too defensive. I think he feels guilty about something. One of the best remarks is from Detroiter William Marshall (RIP 2014) who was a Viet Nam vet who lost an arm and leg in a pitched battle only to become an anti-war organizer. He describes in perfect 60's jive how he and his men were cheering the arrival of air support only to watch the napalm canisters tumble right on to their own trenches and incinerate them. This movie does a good job of showing how the good old patriotic effort wasn't going to work in Viet Nam and how all the war coaches underestimated what they were up against. But it is painful to watch knowing the full political price that was paid and how it was gotten.