Hearts and Minds (1974)

An examination of the conflicting attitudes of the opponents of the Vietnam War.

Director:

Peter Davis

Stars:

Tin Chan, Chau Diem, Ngo Dinh Diem

Won 1 Oscar. Another 3 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Tin Chan	...	Himself (as Faither Chan Tin - Saigon)
Chau Diem	...	Himself - Editor of Trinh Bay Magazine
Ngo Dinh Diem	...	Himself (President of South Vietnam) (archive footage)
John Foster Dulles	...	Himself (Secretary of State 1953-1959) (archive footage)
Kay Dvorshock	...	Herself
Dwight D. Eisenhower	...	Himself (President of the United States) (archive footage)
David Emerson	...	Himself - Concord, Massachusetts
Mui Duc Giang	...	Himself - Coffin Maker
Chi Minh Ho	...	Himself (archive footage)
Charles Hoey	...	Himself - Air Force, Saigon
Stan Holder	...	Himself - Corporal, Placitas, New Mexico
Jerry Holter	...	Himself - Air Force, Saigon
Vo Thi Hue	...	Herself - Hung Dinh Village
Lyndon Johnson	...	Himself (archive footage)
John F. Kennedy	...	Himself (President of the United States) (archive footage)

Storyline

This film recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and interviews. A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and self-righteous militarism helped create and prolong this bloody conflict. The film also endeavors to give voice to the Vietnamese people themselves as to how the war has affected them and their reasons why they fight the United States and other western powers while showing the basic humanity of the people that US propaganda tried to dismiss.

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Plot Keywords:

vietnam | interview | vietnam war | militarism | racism | 

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Genres:

Documentary | War

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Certificate:

R

Details

Official Sites:

Official DVD site [UK] Rialto Pictures

Country:

USA

Language:

English French Vietnamese

Release Date:

17 November 1975 (Sweden)

Also Known As:

Hearts and Minds

Filming Locations:

Linden, New Jersey, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$8,556, 22 October 2004, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$28,754, 31 December 2004

Company Credits

Production Co:

BBS Productions, Major Studio Partners, Rainbow Releasing

Technical Specs

Runtime:

112 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In a Moviefone interview, Michael Moore cites this as one of his inspirations to begin making films.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Clark Clifford, Aide to President Truman: When the second World War was over, we were the one great power in the world. The Soviets had a substantial military machine; but, they could not touch us in power. We had this enormous force that had been built up. We had the greatest fleet in the world. We come through the War economically sound. And, I think that in addition to feeling a sense of responsibility, we also began to feel the sense of a world power - that possibly we could control the future of the world.

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Crazy Credits

The listed translators credited in the movie (Le Thai To, Trung Trac, Le Thanh Tong and Trung Hung Dao) were all Vietnamese generals who had defeated the Chinese in various times from the first century C.E., to the fifteenth century C.E. The translator listed as Nguyen Ai Quoc was an early alias of Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party. I have no knowledge of the last listed translator, Barbara Gore. Apparently, someone played a good joke on the producers of this film, if it wasn't the translators themselves.

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Connections

Features Bataan (1943)

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Soundtracks

There's a Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere
(uncredited)
Written by Paul Roberts and Shelby Darnell
Performed by Wynn Stewart

User Reviews

Difficult, important document of the era

I'll admit up front that Peter Davis' documentary makes no effort to show the carnage and torture sponsored and perpetuated by the Viet Cong -- and the one substantial time it explores the way South Vietnamese civilians were imprisoned and tortured by their own government (in huge numbers, by the way), the film isn't very clear about who made these arrests. It concentrates almost solely on the inhumanity and pointlessness of our presence there in a pointless war which even our leaders were unprepared to comprehend.

It's not "balanced" within itself, but given the day-to-day barrage of standard media coverage of the Vietnam war during the time the documentary was made, I believe the making of this film represented an attempt to "balance" the average American's knowledge of what was really going on and how misrepresented the war was by our government and even by the major media most of the time.

All that being said, it's a vivid, important part of the mosaic of American war records. The images are enormously powerful, and where occasionally Mr. Davis' juxtapositions seem overtly manipulative, he still is to be praised emphatically for collecting and assembling this material in such a courageous and uncompromising way. It is essential viewing because of the power of its collected imagery and the lessons about America that we still need to learn. 30 years after the Vietnam war ended, there are still too many essential ways in which that conflict is not understood....and the degree to which we cannot seem, as a nation, to learn from the lessons of Vietnam is only too evident in the manner and attitude with which our leaders have handled and carried on the American military action in Iraq.

Having read a lot of the writings of Vietnam vets over the years about this war, I'm tempted to say that this documentary doesn't go far enough to show the core of absurdity and tragedy at the heart of this war and the way it put young Americans into a hellish situation for no reason and then left them there to be a part of a morally ambivalent, politically and humanly misguided situation, forever disillusioning and haunting an entire generation. But if this film can help younger people to understand just the tip of the iceberg of the enormous tragedy of America's involvement in a pointless 10-year war, then it continues to be worthwhile.

The film itself does not provide nearly enough "backstory" for a student or younger person who did not live through the era. Peter Davis presupposes that the viewing audience knows a lot of things which we knew at the time but which is no longer general knowledge for many viewers. But as a part of an overall attempt (using various sources) to understand that war and its colossal ramifications to our country's self-image, and as a reminder of how easy it is to slip into a tragic imperialism masquerading as some other kind of naive political idealism, it's an essential and vividly effective document of the times for which we owe Mr. Davis a huge debt of gratitude. There is much to be learned from films like this -- including things which our leaders today don't seem to have learned themselves, despite having lived through the Vietnam era.

It's also important to remember that until the Vietnam war, and later Watergate (reminders of which resonate in the presence in this film of "Pentagon Paper"- leaker Daniel Ellsberg), Americans generally believed what their government told them, and didn't think Presidents lied. It may be difficult now to remember there ever was a time when we trusted our government not to be intentionally misleading us, and if Mr. Davis makes a conspicuous effort to emphasize the duplicity of Johnson and Nixon in this documentary, it's probably because it was such a new and unbelievable concept to the overwhelming percentages of Americans before the Vietnam era took place.