Far from Viet Nam and Green Berets

Far from Viet Nam is a French-made quasi documentary implacably opposed to the war in Southeast Asia. Green Berets is a piece of Hollywood celluloid fiction that clearly assumes the righteousness of the U.S. cause. Despite their divergent views, the two movies resemble each other far more than their makers would care to admit. Both preach to the converted; both assume that moral indignation is sufficient material for a scenario. And both leave the viewer with the conclusion that in a war movie, as in a war, the first casualty is usually common sense.

A collage of footage by six left-wing French directors, including Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Claude Lelouch, Viet Nam piously begins by disclaiming any prejudice. It is, says the narrator, "an indictment of American foreign policy, not Americans." But the Americans on camera are treated with savage contempt. General Westmoreland's address to Congress is shown on color TV while someone fiddles with the color and intensity. Hubert Humphrey utters an optimistic appraisal of Europe as "Humphrey, Go Home!" signs parade past the camera.

Not even his most devoted fans can be as fascinated with Godard as Godard is with himself. His segment shows him behind a camera, droning on about an inspiration he had to demonstrate the war's bestiality. He planned to photograph a woman's nude body, then show what the impact of bullets would do to it. The project was abandoned, he claims, because it required too much research. "I'm full of ideas," Godard concludes, "but ideas aren't much."

Heavy-handed amateur ironies prevail. A Polaroid commercial is doctored to show a still of a dead soldier; a Band-Aid commercial is spliced into combat scenes. Only bits and pieces of conversation with Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro give anything like a sense of ideological actuality. The rest has the secondhand look of a film that has been petulantly edited, as the title implies, far from Viet Nam.

In 1967, the movie claims, Americans dropped more bombs on Viet Nam than they did on Germany during all of World War II. In that case, one more bomb may not matter. Its name is The Green Berets, based on Robin Moore's bestseller. To Producer, Co-Director and Star John Wayne, the war is primer-simple. There's them and there's us. Us are the Green Beret crack troops led by Wayne with a chestful of fruit salad and a no-nonsense approach to the dovish American press, personified by David Janssen. During the beating of a V.C., Reporter Janssen protests, "There's such a thing as due process." "Out here," sneers Wayne, "due process is a bullet." Built on the primitive lines of a standard western, Berets even has the South Vietnamese talking like movie Sioux: "We build many camps, clobber many V.C."

Anticipating history a bit, the film ends with Victor Charlie in full retreat and the good guys in control. Even Janssen is flapping his right wing and impugning his liberal-minded employers: "If I say what I feel, I may be out of a job." Among other dubious distinctions, Green Berets wins this year's Yellow Peril award for a line spoken by a sly South Vietnamese general who spots Wayne eying a willowy Oriental star (Irene Tsu). "Besides being one of our top models," he says, "she could be most helpful to our government."

In his own blunderbuss way, John Wayne has also tried to help make the war comprehensible. But except for the technical excellence of a few gory, glory-hallelujah battle scenes, Green Berets is strictly for the hawks.

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