Sources
Vietnam War Films by
Over 600 feature, made-for-tv, pilot and short movies, 1939-1992, from the U.S., Vietnam, France, Belgium, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Great Britain & more, including 137 Vietnamese films not before noted in the literature. Each entry includes title, alternate titles, year of release, country, studio, credits availability on video, major themes, plot synopses, and critical commentary.
Call Number: REF + DS 557.73 V66 1994Publication Date: 1994 Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland
Search and Destroy: an Illustrated Guide to Vietnam War Movies by
Films of war, psychosis, and horror show Hollywood's portrayal of the war and the devastation visited on veterans. Search & Destroy contains illustrated essays on these and hundreds of other movies, ranging from the combat traumas graphically displayed in documentaries such as Army Medicine In Vietnam, to underground classics to the most garish exploitation movies and gun-fixated redneck trash. Search & Destroy is the ultimate guide to the cinematic legacy of Vietnam, a harrowing trip into the heart of darkness."
Call Number: DS 557.73 S43x 2003 (in Olin Library stacks)Publication Date: 2003 ([London] : Creation Books)
Vietnam at 24 Frames a Second : a critical and thematic analysis of over 400 films about the Vietnam war by
"..Arranged chronologically, this is a critical analysis of 400 Vietnam War films from 1948 through 1993. Recurring themes are stressed along with the ways that movie reflected the national reality, with essays blending plot synopses and critical commentary. The movies run the gamut of genres: dramas, action, adventure, horror, comedies and even one musical.
Call Number: DS557.73 .D48x 1994Publication Date: 1994 (Jefferson, NC : McFarland)- Vietnam: Cinematic Perspectives [Viet Nam Generation Journal, vol.1, no.2, Aug. 2001, p.90-99] by Review by Tony Williams of three books on Vietnam War era films: Vietnam at 24 Frames a Second: A Critical and Thematic Analysis of Over 400 Films About the Vietnam War (Jeremy M Devine); Vietnam at the Movies (Michael Lee Lanning); Born to be Wild: Hollywood and the Sixties Generation (Seth Cagin & Philip Dray.)Call Number: DS 557 V54
- Vietnam War in Hollywood Feature FilmsThis entry in Oxford Bibliographies has an introduction & overview, and lengthy annotated list of print sources, organized by topic.
Movies
Apocalypse Now by
A United States Army officer/trained assassin is sent into the depths of a Southeast Asian jungle to seek out a renegade colonel and terminate his command during the Vietnam War. Stars Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Larry Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford, Aurore Clement, Christian Marquand
Call Number: Videodisc 5253; also 188.Publication Date: 2010 Santa Monica, Calif. : Lionsgate
Good Morning, Vietnam by
Description: Robin Williams plays a raucous, improvisational d.j. who takes over the Armed Forces Radio Saigon morning broadcast, winning popularity among the soldiers but eventually incurring the wrath of higher-ups when he starts telling the truth about the horrors of the war. Stars Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Tung Thanh Tran, Chintara Sukapatana, Bruno Kirby, Robert Wuhl, Noble Willingham, J.T. Walsh, Richard Edson, Juney Smith, Richard Portnow, Floyd Vivino
Call Number: Video 3560 (Library Annex)Publication Date: Burbank, Calif. : Touchstone Home Video : Distributed by Buena Vista Home Video, c1987.
The Deer Hunter by
Multiple Oscar-winning film. Three Pennsylvania steelworkers deal with the savagery and disillusion of fighting in the Vietnam War. Stars Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken
Call Number: Video 1499 (located in Library Annex)Publication Date: 1978: Universal City, CA : MCA Universal Home Video
Platoon by
"A grunt's view of the Vietnam War is provided in all its horrific, inexplicable detail. Follows young Chris Taylor who arrives in Vietnam and quickly discovers that his worst enemies are not just the Viet Cong, but gnawing fear, physical exhaustion, and the anger growing within himself. " Stars Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Francesco Quinn, Keith David, Forest Whitaker
Call Number: Videodisc 5262 (DVD; in Uris Library Dean Room)Publication Date: 2011; [Santa Monica, CA] : Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios ; Beverly Hills, CA : Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Full Metal Jacket by
Originally produced in 1987, Vietnam war drama which begins with a depiction of the brutality of Marine Corps training and then shifts to Vietnam, focusing mainly on a group of Marines responding to the Tet Offensive of 1968. Stars Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey, Dorian Harewood, Arliss Howard, Kevyn Major Howard, Ed O'Ross
Call Number: Videodisc 4079 (Uris Library Dean Room)Publication Date: 2007: Burbank, CA : Warner Home Video
Born on the Fourth of July by
Original movie of 1989. Based on the true story of Ron Kovic, a young man who volunteered for the Vietnam War, was wounded, and returned paralyzed from the mid-chest down. He later became a new voice for those disenchanted with the war. Stars Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger.
Call Number: Videodisc 4916 (located in Uris Library)Publication Date: 2012 [DVD] Universal City, CA : Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Documentaries
- Hearts and Minds (on Kanopy Streaming) Academy-award winning best documentary 1975. "A courageous and startling film, Peter Davis’s landmark documentary Hearts and Minds unflinchingly confronts the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Using a wealth of sources—from interviews to newsreels to documentary footage of the conflict at home and abroad—Davis constructs a powerfully affecting portrait of the disastrous effects of war."
- Disobeying Orders: G.I. Resistance to the Vietnam War (29 min.) Vietnam Veterans who came home from the war committed anti-war activists. Interviews with Black and white veterans, including a Navy nurse who was court-martialed for her opposition to the war, are woven with archival images and music to bring this little know history to the fore..
- The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite Walter Cronkite and on-the-scene CBS correspondents Ed Bradley, Charles Kuralt, Dan Rather, Morley Safer, Bob Simon and others report on the war from "The Seeds of Conflict" to "America Pulls Back." Color and black & white footage.Call Number: DS 557.73 V665 1994 (vols. 1-5 videos; in Library Annex)Publication Date: 1994 (CBS Video ; Beverly Hills, CA : distributed by Fox Video)
- Vietnam, a Television History PBS Emmy-award winnig 13 part documentary on the Vietnam War "from the 1945 revolution against the French to the U.S. evacuation from Saigon in April 1975. Analyzes the costs and consequences of the American war in Vietnam for both countries involved with detailed visual and oral accounts of the war "Call Number: Video 612 (7 videos; in Library Annex)Publication Date: 1987 (New York : Sony Corporation of America ; Boston : WGBH Educational Foundation : SVS Inc. [distributor])
- Sir! No Sir! by (84 min.) " In archival footage and interviews, this film tells the story of an almost forgotten fact of the Vietnam era: the war's most crucial naysayers were soldiers--in the barracks and on the front lines--... .pirate radio stations, underground newspapers, a modern "underground railway" that helped soldiers desert and move to Canada, coffeehouses near U.S. bases where opinions shaped and altered by first-hand experiences were shared, and groups organized around every imaginable axis, which led to anti-war sentiment among U.S. troops being recognized at the highest levels in the Pentagon.Call Number: Videodisc 4679 (Uris Library) also online at streaming video database Docuseek2Publication Date: 2006 ( New York, NY : Docurama Films ; Distributed by New Video Group)
- Winter Soldier "A documentary presenting the proceedings of the winter soldier investigation [in Detroit, Mich, 1971]. Before a public audience some thirty Vietnam veterans both black and white recount in grisly detail the atrocities to which they had been witness or in which they had participated while fulfilling military orders and duties."Call Number: DS 559.2 W78 (1 vol., video, in Library Annex)Publication Date: 1972 [Chesterfield, N.H. : 20/20 Productions]
- Your Tour in Vietnam An Army information film from the early 1960s for the newly drafted soldier.Call Number: DS 557 A6 Y68x 1985 (1 vol, video, in Library Annex)Publication Date: [1960's] ( Chicago, IL : International Historic Films )
- The Quiet Mutiny(26 min.) John Pilger reveals the shifting morale and open rebellion of Western troops serving in Vietnam.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers by
"In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist, concludes that the war is based on decades of lies, and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world...a political thriller... lays out the competing claims [press freedom v. national security] with a rare combination of objectivity and passion."
Call Number: Videodisc 4686 (in Uris Dean Room)Publication Date: 2010 (New York, NY : First Run Features)- Vietnam Movies, the Way it Really Was ABC documentary with Ted Koppel. "Examines how Hollywood once viewed the Vietnam War and how filmmakers see it today. Looks at the new wave of movies that try to tell the story the way it really was by examining such films as "Platoon" and "Hanoi Hilton." Includes interviews with filmmakers, Vietnam veterans and war correspondents."Call Number: DS557.73 V532 1990 (videocassette in Library Annex)Publication Date: 1990 ([Oak Forest, IL] : MPI Home Video)