Diên Biên Phú - A Última Batalha da Indochina

I came to this movie after reading two detailed military history books about the battle. That proved essential because I don't think I would have learned very much about it from watching the film. For the positives: technically, the level of detail was excellent. With the exception of using M41 Walker Bulldog tanks instead of M24 Chaffee tanks, the equipment, weaponry, uniforms, badges etc. Were authentic. The timeline of the battle and specific incidents were perfect. So why did I come away feeling it was such a missed opportunity? Dien Bien Phu was famously referred to as France's "Verdun in the jungle". On the French side, French, Vietnamese, Algerian, African and other soldiers, able bodied and wounded, slept in water filled trenches by day and fought, often hand to hand in isolated actions, to protect them from dusk until dawn as the Vietminh launched repeated human wave attacks across ground that had been churned to mud through artillery fire. For both sides victory was a chance to gain advantage at the Geneva Peace Conference which had begun on 26 April and would only set the stage for the larger war that followed. Dien Bien Phu fell on 7 May and the Conference concluded on 21 July. That was the historical and political reality. Unbelievably in this film the Vietminh are invisible until the closing scenes of the French surrender, when they appear by the thousand. That any fighting is going on at all can only be inferred by the mass graves of French and allied soldiers, the overcrowded "field hospitals", the regular sound of incoming and outgoing artillery as soldiers sit in their trenches and talk, or listen to last radio messages that yet another position is being over run. For a war film showing the futility of ordering soldiers to risk their lives so their leaders can gain a political advantage I'd recommend Pork Chop Hill (1959). This could have so easily been so much more.

This movie narrates Dien Bien Phu battle, the decisive one between France and Indochina separatists - Vietnamese having not finished with wars as this was preceding the US presence and Vietnam war. As important as it is for France to have a movie on this war, and this battle - with only a few other - the movie is globally disappointing. Mainly its first part, where the conflict is shown through the eyes of an american reporter, in relation with some French military officers and one Vietnamese rickshaw driver... The characters are stereotyped, and the population is represented, outside the rickshaw driver, by the bets at a Chinese bookmaker and one educated Vietnamese - with both these two guys pretty well aware of what awaits them in the future with the Vietcong! I have to confess, as a French, I would have loved to have the Vietnamese population shown and their relationship with France, instead of that and a classical violin concert.

Second part is better as it shows the battle itself and has the quality to avoid its representation by blitz war and clear winners / losers. Here the war longs the whole days, with losses and wins changing each time. We see how volunteers keep coming, to help their fellow soldiers (France 'territory' is not the point anymore) and to defend their honor - not forgetting the 'rats', the one that hide and avoid the battle.

Globally, average.

This movie needs some background knowledge of the colonial European history, mainly the french one, to be fully appreciated. The director, Schoendorffer, was an army cameraman sent to Dien Bien Phu, and one of the characters, Howard R. Simpson, was an US correspondent in Indochina and wrote an interesting book: "Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot", worth to read.Schoendorffer was prisoner after the battle and sent to Vietminh concentration camps where he survived after another cameraman from the Red Army meet him.He is the narrator's voice.

What caught first my attention in this movie is that if you were serving in the army, it puts you right from the beginning in the atmosphere of a regular soldier spending time in maneuver and camp exercises.Guys on the field, some artillery, some air force, and some shouting in the background.Nothing spectacular, absolutely no epic, just like you're back in the military.At a certain point mortars fire is increasing, and shouting escalating, and that's the start of the battle.And you are in the mud, bleeding bodies and dead around you.It's just slightly over the level of raw documentary. So it's easy to feel close to the guys on the battlefield.Some Thai volunteers are shown, alongside Vietnamese, African troops, paratroopers, legionnaire, regular infantry, etc.Quite realistic photography and not like "in the movies". The Vietminh artillery made landing impossible, the place was isolated and only parachutist support is possible. Hills all around, it's often cloudy and Vietminh troops keep until the end hidden by their camouflage strategy.Nguyen Giap opted for an intense, moving and steady mortar bombing, backed by supplies and troops supported by China.Instead of a fierce battle were the tactics of the french general could had been superior.

But that's no the point of the movie. Because, scenes at the ground, depicting the evolution and worsening of the battle, are alternated with the situation as seen from Hanoï. In this part, there's a reconstitution of the colonial french time, the Vietnamese, the Europeans, the colorful variety of uniforms. A violinist comes to the city for a gala concert.Life keeps going on at the same pace, while in the meantime soldiers are being sacrificed in Dien Bien Phu.A symbolic way to show how the politics were already wanting to leave Indochina, but at the same time they wanted a nice exit, with military bravery and honors, a la legionnaire. The nice violinist lady has a relative who is captain and they meet with other soldiers at a bar where some talks give an insight on the situation and the meaning of the battle, which appears more and more like a strategical non-sense.

Soldiers are shown doing their job and there's nothing theatrical, just few quaint words about military duty's spirit and a somewhat "old school" sense of bravery.But in the 50's that was still very alive in the french military.So it stays in context. Talks between soldiers are fully understood to people familiar with french army mind and traditions.Otherwise it works like an insight.

The movie is somewhat biased as an ode to Indochina and its people itself, which is a point of view debatable.Ho Chi Minh was, despite being communist, an independents and French were foreign rulers.Yet, that point of view and the kind of relation of Vietnam to french culture is represented by the boss of the local paper in Hanoï.

All in all, an excellent movie, even if not accessible to a non-informed public.

The movie is a good war movie. What is a good war movie? No heroes, no suicide attacks, no nonsense behaviour. It is quite a while since I've seen it, but I still remember having been touched deeply by the feeling the movie left after having watched it...any movie accomplishing that is worth to be seen.

The battle Of Dien Bien Phu is one of these battles that became quickly forgotten in military history . It is a battle that should never be forgotten . In an attempt to deal a decisive blow to the nationalist Viet Minh during the French Indo-China war the French forces built a base deep in the hills of Indo-China in 1954 hoping to cut off the VM supply lines and to use the base as an anvil where the Viet Minh would be hammered in to submission . With hindsight the plan was doomed to failure since the French were conducting a not altogether unsuccessful strategy of mobile warfare against the nationalists up till this point . The French also underestimated the Vietnamese ability to carry heavy artillery including anti aircraft guns in to the war zone which considering the French base was totally reliant on air supply led to the disaster that saw 2,500 French forces killed in a six week battle , another 11,000 captured of which nearly 80% died in Viet Minh captivity and led to France losing the war , the first time a major industrial power lost to a third world nation and set in motion the build up to the cold war confrontation that saw 58,000 Americans and 2,000,000 Vietnamese die in the better known conflict that started 10 years later

The French Indo-Chinese conflict isn't one that is often seen on celluloid . I remember in the mid 1980s how popular the American experience Vietnam was in popular Western culture with countless books being published and of course the big Hollywood blockbusters . One of the problems with this is summed up in an interview with the writer/director of DIEN BIEN PHU Piere Schoendoerffer who stated that there that he had a problem getting the budget to portray the battle and you can see his point since French cinema is depending on how you look at it famous or infamous at making small budget existentialist movies rather than Hollywood style blockbusters

Make no mistake this is big budget , epic cinema rarely seen in Europe and many of the battle scenes resemble those seen in the Du Long bridge sequence of APOCALYPSE NOW . The director spent the real life battle as a cameraman so he knows what the conditions were like and it shows . For anyone who has visited the Asian continent during monsoon season they'll realise rain doesn't exist in the Western hemisphere only drizzle and Schoendoerffer gets that right . I have no experience of war in general and the battle of Dien Bien in particular but have no reason to doubt that the battle here is anything less than 100 per cent accurate as each hill is over run and the French defenders realise that the outcome is historical defeat

There are a couple of points that do irritate . One is the presence of Donald Pleasence who hasn't a lot to do and his miscasting seems to be included to sell the film to an English speaking market . The second is a sequence where the story cuts back to Hanoi ( The fractured storyline keeps cutting back to Dien Bien Phu and Hanoi ) where a concert is taking place and a female violin player plays a solo as the picture cross fades to the night time battlefield which brings an art-house scene where the film certainly didn't require it

These are minor flaws in a film that requires to be much better known and it's somewhat sad that so few people have commentated on DIEN BIEN PHU in the English speaking pages of this website . If you like watching war films there's few films showing the horrors of war better . Put this in perspective in ten years of war in Afghanistan it took ten years for NATO to lose 2,000 troops . At Dien Bien Phu the French lost that amount in six weeks