Friday, March 28, 2008

Now available online: John Ford's pro-Vietnam War propaganda documentary.

Here's the YouTube link to the first part of the entire 58 minutes of the John Ford production VIETNAM! VIETNAM! (helped into birth by Bruce Herschensohn and actual director Sherman Beck for the United States Information Agency):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlMfG1pw_eE
An interesting passage from Joseph McBride's John Ford bio SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD:
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this little-known episode of Ford's life is that privately he had a highly skeptical view of the Vietnam War.  After making two trips to Vietnam in the winter of 1968 and the spring of 1969, Ford wrote his high school classmate Alnah Johnson, "What's the war all about?  Damned if I know.  I haven't the slightest idea what we're doing there."  But when asked to lend his name and talents to the cause, Ford reflexively fell into the "My country, right or wrong" attitude of his service as a government filmmaker in World War II and Korea.  Perhaps he was partly influenced by his characteristic attachment to lost causes, for by the time he joined up, seven months after the Tet Offensive, the Vietnam War was already widely regarded as a disaster for the United States and had split the nation into bitterly opposed camps of "hawks" and "doves."  Once again, Ford had found the moment of defeat.

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