Vietnam War With Walter Cronkite
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DVD details
Brand: Timeless Media GroupDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 720 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 1985 CBS News Video Library
DVD Reviews of Vietnam War With Walter Cronkite
DVD Review: Fascinating stuff...
Summary: 5 Stars
When deciding on a good Vietnam documentary I knew I wanted something extensive and with plenty of first hand accounts. This brought me to this DVD and the PBS Television History of Vietnam DVD. After reading the reviews of the PBS version I was dismayed to see that there were things left out from the original production and decided on the Cronkite set. With all that said, I'm not sure how much of the PBS series duplicates the footage on this series, nor do I know if this series includes parts that were left out of the PBS series. I never saw the PBS series so I cannot comment on a comparison between the PBS set and this one. It would certainly be something I'd like to know, so if anyone has seen both and would like to comment, please do.
So, in looking at this documentary on its own, I can say without hesitation that it was immensely entertaining and informative. What you are getting is about 12 hours of CBS news footage. Some of it has narration by Cronkite to bring the viewer into the scene and frame a specific topic or event, but the majority of footage is simply the news broadcasts of the day as they were shown back then. The set is divided into 11 different parts. These episodes follow a loose chronology beginning with The French falling at Dien Bien Phu and going all the way up to the fall of Saigon. However, the episodes are more thematic and therefore jump around in time.
The stories selected for the DVD are engrossing. I didn't find myself bored for one instant during the entire length of the documentary. I also appreciate the large amount of human interest stories included. Things might have gotten dull for me if they showed 12 hours of combat footage. This is especially true for a war like Vietnam where the combat footage consisted mostly of soldiers firing into the jungle at an unseen enemy. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of great combat footage. It is some of the other types of stories I enjoyed most. For example, there is a story about an area in South Vietnam where the military brings its trash, basically a landfill in Vietnam. Vietnam peasants converge on the trash like vultures searching for any scrap they can find. One sergeant is responsible for chasing away the Vietnamese who descend on the daily trash disposals. Right away you can see the futility of this task. As soon as he chases away one group another is rummaging through another part of the trash pile. When interviewing the sergeant his disdain for the Vietnamese is clear as he refers to them as "less than human." He is obviously a man who is not happy with his current assignment. Things take a turn for the worse when some Vietnamese are wounded by a not quite spent concussion grenade which goes off in a pile of trash.
One entire segment of the documentary was devoted to the city of Saigon. It was quite interesting to see the strange dichotomy between the US forces and the native Vietnamese in the city of Saigon.
I'd also like to comment on the episode on Tet. I found it extremely well done. There was extensive coverage of Khe Sanh on this episode as well. The footage of soldiers at Khe Sanh playing guitar and singing amongst all the chaos around them is priceless.
I don't feel I can conclude my review without mentioning -for lack of a better term- the sheer balls that these reporters and crew had. You will see many familiar faces on the front lines including Cronkite himself, Dan Rather, and Morley Saefer, among others. Many of these TV crews were under fire just as the soldiers were and they seemed to brave any danger to get their story. At the end of the program Cronkite tells the viewers that in fact 8 colleagues at CBS were killed in Vietnam and 30 were injured while covering the war. Frankly, I'm surprised the numbers weren't higher. It's also interesting to watch how the reporters who spent a lot of time in Vietnam go from hawk to dove right in front of your eyes as the war drags on. Like the soldiers, these reporters were witnessing the quagmire of Vietnam first hand, and after a while they had no trouble expressing their disdain for the situation to the American public. This media coverage cannot be underestimated in the ultimate decision of Lyndon Johnson not to run for re-election. It is said that Johnson knew when he lost Cronkite he lost the American people as well. That's how powerful these stories were in shaping American opinion on the war.
Although it may be understood I feel I should mention that this documentary is not for the faint of heart. You see a lot of the horrors of The Vietnam War here. Yes, there are mangled and bloodied bodies including women and children. This was the reality of the war and this documentary pulls no punches in this regard.
Overall I don't hesitate in recommending this DVD for anyone interested in Vietnam. There are more highlights in these stories than I have space to recollect in this review, and besides, you should see them for yourself. Having been born the year before Saigon fell, I have no memory of these news casts as I was not alive of course. Seeing these stories brought me as close to Vietnam as I could hope to get without actually being there. This is no movie. It's the real thing, and these gutsy reporters did a great job of bringing the war into American living rooms. I'm glad I finally got to bring these broadcasts into my living room as well.
Description of Vietnam War With Walter Cronkite
For decades, the war in Vietnam was the central drama on the stage of Southeast Asia. It was an intensely publicized war, the first television war that came roaring into the living rooms of America every night. Walter Cronkite tells the story of the long and divisive conflict as seen through the eyes of CBS News. Dan Rather, Morley Safer and Ed Bradley report the stories of American courage, failed programs, an elusive enemy and ultimately an end to a tragic war. It is all graphically shown in these superb CBS documentaries which tell the story of the most divisive war in American history and its effect on those who fought it.Bestsellers in DVD
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