The 317th Platoon

In keeping with his experience as a war correspondent/photographer, Pierre Schoendoerffers does not waste any screen time here on preliminaries but launches us straight into the action and establishes the two principal protagonists from the outset. The dynamic between the archetypal young idealist of Jacques Perrin and the grizzled veteran played by Bruno Cremer is impressive and both actors excel.

There are no gung-ho, macho, mock heroics here but a grim depiction of human beings in extremis. By all accounts the director was demanding of his cast and the making of it on location in Cambodia must have been distinctly unpleasant although not nearly as unpleasant as the real thing!

A film such as this would have been far less effective in colour and Schoendoerffer's masterstroke here is in utilising the services of one of France's greatest lighting cameramen Raoul Coutard whose bleak, monochromatic cinematography gives the effect of newsreel footage.

At a time when nations are having to come to terms with and face the consequences of their colonial past this film is ripe for rediscovery.

Despite its controversial nature and the French public's weariness with colonial conflicts this film did surprisingly well at the box office.

Brilliant military historian Antony Beevor has declared this to be the greatest war film ever, an opinion few would share. However, judged on its raw power, immediacy and an overwhelming sense of 'being there', it must surely take high rank.

La 317ème section is a movie about a French/anti-communist platoon that gets separated whilst up country during the Vietminh offensive against Dien Bien Phu.

The movie's two main advantages are that the director was an ex-combatant in that war, and Raoul Coutard, who was one of the great New Wave cinematographers.

The story concerns a green lieutenant, Torrens, thirsty for battle, brave and intelligent, though seemingly an adventurer from another century, and his seasoned adjutant Willsdorf, Alsatian Wehrmacht veteran. Many other films have used this formula, a classic principal-agent problem that genuinely occurs in conflicts, but used it as a metaphor for classism, and exaggerated matters.

If you look at Hollywood treatments of either the Korean War or the Vietnam War, particularly around this era, you genuinely see that there is absolutely no understanding of the naturalised inhabitants of the country. Even where there is good will, these productions remain opaque. Willsdorf however genuinely seems to have a feel for the people and how they live. He senses a more poetical way of living, which he respects, but which is clearly ripe for exploitation. There's a piece of dialogue where he mentions how the trees of the forest will soon turn red for Autumn, and that when they do the locals will drink, dance, make love and celebrate, and you sense part of him wants to join with that, wants to find a nook in a river bend where he can set up house.

What these individuals are though, as literally shown in the opening credits, are soldier ants in the forest, their lives are expendable. They are men who live in a man's world without the comforts of home, and take their pleasures where they may, they can only hope to do their duty and lay down and die, and may as well embrace what they do and who they are. It's not a "war is madness" movie, but it is terribly sad, and I was just sorry for Willsdorf that he wasn't sipping a nice Riesling back home after tucking his children into bed. It seems that by being totally apolitical the film manages to leave room for you to come to the conclusion that imperialism is deeply aberrant.

At the core this film is a proto-Vietnam war movie. Which in itself is funny seeing how the French Indochina War was a prequel of sorts of the Vietnam War. Anthony Beevor, the most respected war historian, has described this movie as being the one portraying the military the best. I would agree.

The movie might be the archetype of the Vietnam War movie. It has all the elements that became staples of the genre. It has the forsaken and isolated platoon, the long, weary and ultimately pointless activities/marches, the dreadful hostile tropical environment etc... The only thing it lacks is the shattering of exceptionalism, although you could argue that the young lieutenant fills that role somewhat.

However, this movie in particular felt fresh and lighter than other war movies. It tells its story exclusively from a military point of view. It is a very minimalistic movie; it is about people in tough situations. In this movie the war is not a heroic thing. It is not romantic, tragic, epic or brave. It is primarily exhausting, tiresome. It isn't cool by any means; it is dirty by all means. The life of a soldier is not shooting, or fighting, it's mainly walking under moist heat. It is about being tired, not being able to sleep, being thirsty, being hungry. It shows a very mundane aspect of war, and therefore it allows itself to be sincere about it. More than any other war movie, there is something very raw about it, in a good way. The movie is very honest, it feels real.

It might be also because there is no story to speak of. The movie takes place in parallel to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. There are echoes of the war and how the conflict progresses, but for the most part the platoon is isolated. You spend two hours with these guys and you completely understand that the war is unwinnable. Instead of a story the plot focuses rather on the soldiers. Especially the young idealistic, nerdy, officer opposed to the battle-hardened veteran. It is an pattern that is reused in Platoon with more drama. Here it starts as an antagonism of sorts but, interestingly, the events turn it into camaraderie. Bruno Cremer is the hero of this movie. And it is kind of bold for a movie from the sixties, when the anti-hero archetype was not as widespread and even less associated with the army.

The strengths of the film are emphasized by the mise-en-scene. The movie has that Nouvelle Vague effortlessness. It is not in the streets and cafés of the big city, it is the bushes in the jungle and going through rivers. The style is also very simple, yet it is effective. The image is in black and white, it conveys that feeling that in the jungle everything looks the same. The only music that is used is the tunes the soldiers get when they set up their radio. It is brilliant.

In 1954 Vietnam, at the time of Diên Biên Phu, a French unit on patrol under the command of an inexperienced lieutenant is gradually depleted by Vietminh until only an ex-Wehrmacht Alsatian adjutant remains. He is to die, a title informs us, in Algeria in 1960.

Semi-documentary in style, this is an effectively low-key appraisal of the difficult choices with which war confronts its soldiers. As so often in Vietnam films the enemy is only glimpsed from a distance, the camera remaining a disembodied observer among the group. Bertrand Tavernier acted as co-writer on the film.

This movie is so close to the reality that, in the French Army, it is still used for the instruction of the young infantry platoon commanders. Notably the management of the NCOs, usually older and more experienced than the Lieutenant fresh from the Academy, is an interesting issue. And nearly all the basics of the infantryman on the battlefield are there. Keep in mind that Schoendorffer was a war correspondent within the French Army in Indochina at that time. The DVD version of the movie is now available (at least in France). Charlie Bravo (1980) is another French movie that depicts a similar story, but with less talent and less realistically.