Vietnam Revisited

THERE THEY ARE again, flying slowly and ominously against a colored sky...the helicopters. Followed by unsettling yet compelling footage of civilians, of soldiers, of generals and of Presidents, the opening of public television's monumental series, Vietnam: A Television History heralds what may be the best historical documentary yet televised. And so it should be, for Vietnam was America's first televised war. Aired on Tuesday nights at 9:00 (Channel 2) from October 4 to December 20. Vietnam offers a vivid and unprecedented account of the Indochinese conflict.

Six years and more than $4 million went into PBS's representation of a war which lasted over 12 years taking as its toll over $150 billion, and more than 57,000 American lives. The 13 terse and instructive episodes start with China's domination in the first century and end with an assessment of the war's effects on Vietnam and the United States. Marked by a no-frills production, the footage and interviews speak for themselves. By presenting both old and new images, thoughts and perspectives, the film provides a detailed and provocative, and yet somehow ambiguous, treatment of what happened in Southeast Asia.

Surprisingly, the idea for the series was conceived in 1977 when General William Westmoreland suggested that Boston-affiliated WGBH depict the Vietnam story from a military perspective. "The Westmoreland meeting got us thinking. In the end, we decided to develop a series encompassing all points of view," one producer recalls. Organizing the ambitious project came with risks as the producers began researching and structuring a vast and complicated subject without knowing how the public would react. Even though most corporations refused to fund the controversial topic, with help from ABC (which also provided all their archive material from news reels plus outtakes--royalty free), various foundations, the National Endowment for the Humanities and of course the Chubb Group, WGBH embarked on supervising the project.

THE PRODUCTION OF the series is a story in itself; producers attended six weeks of "Vietnam School," including seminars taught by Southeast Asia scholars, seasoned correspondents and other specialists. While the producers hired more than 60 consultants over the course of the project; researchers scoured over 70 film archives around the world collecting rare material from such places as the Hanoi Documentary Studios, the U.S. Army and the United Nations.

In addition, to complement the extraordinary plentitude and quality of footage, the producers conducted over 300 interviews, 100 in Vietnam. Interviewees include top brass from the period in North and South Vietnam and America, and only former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon and South Vietnamese ex-President Nguyen Van Thieu refused interviews. Equally important are the discussions with numerous combatants and non-combatants on both sides.

Four production units--two American, one British and one French--worked together on the project creating the overall design even though a different producer oversaw each installment. And if the first two episodes epitomize the rest of the series then no doubt remains that the producers succeeded in crafting what ex-Vietnam correspondent Fox Butterfield calls "...a meticulously researched and carefully balanced," documentary.

The first program, "The Roots of War," follows the development of the Vietnamese Revolutionary movement through WWII coloring a lively and startling portrait of Ho Chi Minh. The program shows how Ho, a charismatic leader, actually received aid and training for his troops from the U.S.; he also rescued downed American flyers in Vietnam and saved them from the Japanese. At the end of WWII. Ho proclaimed, using Thomas Jefferson's very words, a Vietnamese Declaration of Independence Meanwhile, the British released and rearmed recently captured Japanese so that they-might destroy the Vietminh and restore control to the French who after a humiliating European war, wanted to keep their colony.

In the second installment. "The First Vietnam War," the French fight the Vietminh for eight years only to be soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu, as a French general pointedly recalls a talk with General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese Defense Minister and instigator of Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive

"He said, '...politics come before economics. The destruction is not important. The deaths--one million Vietnamese deaths--not important. The French will die, too. We are ready. It will last two years, five years if necessary. We will no longer give in.'"

Giap himself states the Vietminh military strategy, "...in war we have to win, absolutely have to win." The episode finishes with the precarious Geneva Accords of 1954, and closes after a story about the French Legionaires landing at Dien Bien Phu. After the legionaires patriotically sing their Legion song, a cadre of Vietnamese respond by chanting La Marseillaise having no song of their own.

WHILE VIETNAM REMAINS simple and straightforward, the product so far has been highly professional. With relatively little commentary, the speaker narrates events in detail but refrains from editorializing; he speaks intelligently and treats the viewer as intelligent. The film is crisp with no music save in the opening and closing credits. So far, the interviews have been at least informative and more often gripping and insightful. Even though the series must have been a monumental task alone--with over 100 hours of footage from thousands of different sources to piece together--the cutting is clean, well paced and unnoticeable. Cinena Verise, Vietnam uses some very disturbing films and will undoubtedly become more graphically violent as the conflict progresses.

But Americans watched such footage every night on the evening news, and many people believe that television, in fact, influenced the outcome of the Vietnam war. So it seems appropriate that the first comprehensive oral/visual history of Vietnam should be shown through that medium. All the same, the advantages and constraints of using television to present history are great while most historical films have a tendency to oversimplify and merely pictorialize complex issues in a form of exalted journalism. However, Vietnam escapes possible limitations and offers a thorough survey of the events leaving all interpretations of history to the viewers.

Some critics complain that the series offers no analysis and so does not give the subject matter a proper structure and perspective. But when tackling difficult moral questions on film (Stanley Kramer's Judgement at Nuremberg) letting the audience draw their own conclusions may just be the best device.

No one says the series gives the last word: rather it should hopefully stimulate further study of particular issues regarding the conflict. Though a crucial history very pertinent to events today, few people have actually tried to learn about Vietnam by themselves. Vietnam's most important result may be to encourage people to be more informed and aware of the issues at stake right now in places like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Angola and El Salvador.