I was born in 1957 so I have no idea what Vietnam was like by the time the French accepted defeat in 1954, but PATROUILLE DE CHOC strikes me as a very honest account of the Indochina War.
It opens with the French colonizers trying to win the hearts and minds of the local people whose traditions are completely different, and who obviously resent the foreign presence affecting the way of life they have enjoyed and nurtured for thousands of years.
You get to see a black soldier teaching French to Vietnamese children. You see the locals apparently accepting domination but in their deadpan or smiling faces you can detect treachery - after all, all is fair in war, and terrorist tactics are as good as any other. Pity that the Americans either did not watch or did not pay heed to this 1957 movie to know what they were getting into in Vietnam.
You see some truly great sequences in PATROUILLE: a military column passes by as an Indochinese civilian mourns a deceased relative in a coffin; you see children trying to find out the identity of the deceased that French soldiers are carrying in a blanket tied to a tree branch; you see a Budhist temple shot to pieces in the course of a French raid on Viet troops apparently praying in that temple; you see an Indochinese couple get married in the Catholic Church; you see a wonderful dragon display to welcome a French military commander visiting the area, only for an attack to be sprung on the fort in the next few nights.
You see the way the Viet play with the victims: they put their flag up on the barbed wire surrounding the fort to warn that they are coming. It is a warning that wears down the threatened, in the knowledge that it will definitely happen. The Viet know that their numbers are far greater and that they will prevail in the end. You see the mental disintegration of the colonial forces with each attack by the Viets.
The voiceover narration is effective and unsentimental, pointing out that the night is as much the enemy as the Viets. You feel the vulnerability of sentinels. The night is "the color of death." As in the jungle:, it is the ideal time for predators to attack.
And so you see two peoples, two wonderful cultures, killing each other. The film ends with a short written message: "Let this be a warning not to waste life unnecessarily in the future."
I have no idea how Director Aubert managed to get such realistic shots of the Indochinese countryside, French fortifications, local people. Indochina had ceased to exist after the defeat in the battle on the Dien Bien Phu valley in 1954 and I doubt that the Vietnameses wanted the French back, even just to do a film.
What is more, PATROUILLE was done on a shoestring budget. How Aubert managed to get all the countryside shots, the local people at work, French military vehicles, guns, cannons, and other ware is mind-boggling. Today, he would have had to resort to all manner of computer tricks and he would never have come up with anything near as authentic.
This is a completely credible, knowledgeable, gripping and honest account by someone who lived this unpopular and invidious war that was to cause massive loss of life, extensive environmental damage, and a very definite loss of Western prestige in that part of the planet. And it would go on for at least another decade once the USA became involved...
It opens with the French colonizers trying to win the hearts and minds of the local people whose traditions are completely different, and who obviously resent the foreign presence affecting the way of life they have enjoyed and nurtured for thousands of years.
You get to see a black soldier teaching French to Vietnamese children. You see the locals apparently accepting domination but in their deadpan or smiling faces you can detect treachery - after all, all is fair in war, and terrorist tactics are as good as any other. Pity that the Americans either did not watch or did not pay heed to this 1957 movie to know what they were getting into in Vietnam.
You see some truly great sequences in PATROUILLE: a military column passes by as an Indochinese civilian mourns a deceased relative in a coffin; you see children trying to find out the identity of the deceased that French soldiers are carrying in a blanket tied to a tree branch; you see a Budhist temple shot to pieces in the course of a French raid on Viet troops apparently praying in that temple; you see an Indochinese couple get married in the Catholic Church; you see a wonderful dragon display to welcome a French military commander visiting the area, only for an attack to be sprung on the fort in the next few nights.
You see the way the Viet play with the victims: they put their flag up on the barbed wire surrounding the fort to warn that they are coming. It is a warning that wears down the threatened, in the knowledge that it will definitely happen. The Viet know that their numbers are far greater and that they will prevail in the end. You see the mental disintegration of the colonial forces with each attack by the Viets.
The voiceover narration is effective and unsentimental, pointing out that the night is as much the enemy as the Viets. You feel the vulnerability of sentinels. The night is "the color of death." As in the jungle:, it is the ideal time for predators to attack.
And so you see two peoples, two wonderful cultures, killing each other. The film ends with a short written message: "Let this be a warning not to waste life unnecessarily in the future."
I have no idea how Director Aubert managed to get such realistic shots of the Indochinese countryside, French fortifications, local people. Indochina had ceased to exist after the defeat in the battle on the Dien Bien Phu valley in 1954 and I doubt that the Vietnameses wanted the French back, even just to do a film.
What is more, PATROUILLE was done on a shoestring budget. How Aubert managed to get all the countryside shots, the local people at work, French military vehicles, guns, cannons, and other ware is mind-boggling. Today, he would have had to resort to all manner of computer tricks and he would never have come up with anything near as authentic.
This is a completely credible, knowledgeable, gripping and honest account by someone who lived this unpopular and invidious war that was to cause massive loss of life, extensive environmental damage, and a very definite loss of Western prestige in that part of the planet. And it would go on for at least another decade once the USA became involved...
