The Little Girl of Hanoi

I've just seen this film as part of my history degree course and found it to be a very interesting and moving account of the Vietnam war told from the perspective of a young North Vietnamese girl. While I wouldn't label it as out and out propaganda there are elements that reminded me strongly of British WWII flag wavers.

As I have said it is a moving film and there are some very nice touches, notably when the girl plays her violin to block the sound of bombs dropping to placate an infant. There are also some surprises. Having only seen this war as reflected from a U.S P.O.V I was surprised to see the following:

The war was not entirely limited to jungle warfare. This film is an account of the bombing of Hanoi.

In no other film had I seen the domestic side of Vietnamese life; a fairly happy family.

It had not occurred to me from watching other films that the Vietnamese would even know who Nixon was, here they seem relatively well informed; especially women.

I had previously thought that the Vietnamese had only possessed light arms, machine guns etc. In this film we see large missiles being transported (though I did suspect that it was perhaps only one missile being shown again and again or simply empty warheads!)

I do realise that this was a form of propaganda and therefore elements can be questioned, but nonetheless it is very interesting to see things from a different perspective. I would recommend this film to anyone with a serious interest in history or world cinema.