H PLATOON (317T) Movie Review

1965 Pierre Schoendoerffer

Pierre Schoendoerffer's fatalistic 1965 view of the French involvement in IndoChina can be seen as a preview to the American experience. The trappings, the characters, and the dramatic rise and fall of the plot have all been repeated both in reality and on film. Schoendoerffer scrupulously avoids any overt political statement, and so his film's relevance to what happened immediately after it was made is cast in sharp focus.

The setting is May 1954. An introduction explains that after nine years of fighting, the Viet Minh is on the verge of victory. The battle of Dien Bien Phu is in its second month, and various national delegations are about to meet in Geneva where, two months later, an armistice will be signed. The French Command has ordered the 317th Platoon to abandon its post in Luong Ba in Northern Cambodia, destroy what equipment they can't carry out, and withdraw 100 miles south to Tao Tsai. Under the leadership of Lt. Torrens (Jacques Perrin) and the veteran NCO Wilsdorf (Bruno Cremer), a few Frenchmen and their Cambodian allies make ready to leave. At the last minute, they decide that, because they like to drink their Pernod cold, they'll take the refrigerator. They become more serious when they meet the first of the advancing Vietnamese.

With location filming and rough black-and-white photography, the film has a familiar look. The weapons, uniforms, and jungle settings have been seen in hundreds of other films and countless hours of news footage. More significantly, the characters and their attitudes are ones that audiences know all too well. These French “advisors” display a superior disdain for the indigenous people while they indulge their taste for the local opium. They booby-trap bodies and, weather permitting, call in air support when things get tight. What may strike American audiences as strange (and will certainly put off many viewers) is the overall harshness of these personalities. These are not sympathetic characters; they're not meant to be. They're professional soldiers—one a veteran of the Wehrmacht—who enjoy war and killing. For reasons of their own, they're involved in a conflict that has nothing to do with them. It's hard to summon up much empathy for them, then, as the faceless Viet Minh come ever closer.

That coldness makes it difficult to maintain much emotional interest in the film, too. It is exceptionally well made, with a maturity that few American films of the mid-'60s possessed. Schoendoerffer, who directed from a script he'd written from his own novel, makes no effort to smooth over the characters' rough edges. To do so would undercut his larger historical point—that such wars are doomed. In 317th Platoon, the idea is understated but unmistakable.

Cast: Jacques Perrin (Le Sours-Lt. Torrens), Bruno Cremer (L'Adjudant Wilsdorf), Pierre Fabre (Le Sgt. Roudier), Manuel Zarzo; Written by: Pierre Schoendoerffer; Cinematography by: Raoul Coutard; Music by: Gregorio Garcia Segura, Pierre Jansen. French. Running Time: 100 minutes. Format: VHS, LV.