The Sixties - Sir No Sir And the A Yank in Viet-Nam Compared - Movie Review Example

Sur Lecturer The Sixties: Sir! No Sir! And the movie A Yank in Viet-Nam compared Introduction Movie cinema in the 1960s mirrored the decade of fashion, fun, rock n roll, transitional cultural values, and tremendous social changes, that is the civil rights epoch and marches. This time was a stormy decade of monumental tragedies, cultural events, changes, advancements, assassinations and deaths. However, 1963 was marked the worst year for film production within fifty years. That is there were only about 121 feature releases. Nonetheless, the subsequent year saw the largest number of foreign movies released in the US (there were around 361 foreign releases in the US). With movie audiences decreasing due to the authority television was commanding, key American film companies started to diversify to other forms of entertainment: TV movies, production of TV series, records, publishing. Increasingly the 60s saw major studios financed and circulated independently-produced local pictures. As such, made-for-TV movies turn out to be a regular feature of the network programming by the mid-decade. Majority of "runaway" film productions were now being made abroad in an attempt to save money. By 1965, the average ticket cost was no more than a dollar, while the average film budget cost was slightly more than 1.5 million dollars. By the end of the 60s, the film industry was much troubled and depressed. It experienced an all-time low which had been developing for nearly 25 years. This paper will talk about the sixties while comparing the movie Sir! No Sir! With another movie about Vietnam-A Yank in Viet-Nam. Sir! No Sir! Is a movie about the Gi Movement Counteracting the war in Vietnam. With no doubt, this is a story marked as one of most lively and widespread commotions of the 1960s– it`s one that had a weighty impact on the American society, yet it has been virtually eradicated from the communal memory of that time. The 1960’s saw emergence of an anti-war movement that changed the course of history. This Gi movement didn’t only take place on the college campuses, but also in barracks as well as on aircraft carriers. It thrived in navy brigs, army stockades, and in dingy towns which surround military bases. It pierced into elite military colleges such as West Point. It extended throughout the battlegrounds of Vietnam. It was actually a movement no one anticipated, least of all the people in it.  Hundreds were sent to prison while thousands into exile.  And at the culmination of the decade it had, as one colonel said, infested the whole armed services. Despite this fact, today few individuals know about movie Sir! No Sir! The movie just echoed about the Vietnam War which has been the subject matter of hundreds of films, whether fiction or non-fiction. According to (Monaco, 138), the portrayal of Vietnamese in the American war films is distressingly stereotyped. The movie shows Vietnamese civilians as prostitutes, passive victims, or scheming with the enemy, whereas North Vietnamese fighters are drawn as effeminate cowards, cruel torturers. In Monaco`s opinion, "the philosophy of such films expresses several basic and prevalent public attitudes towards war". According to (Monaco, 84), conception of the movie Sir! No Sir! Was largely gathered from movies, documentaries, and the experience of older relatives who operated in wars as well as other popular Vietnam War expressions As such, this movie tackles the story of rebellion of hundreds of American soldiers opposing the war, a feature that has never been portrayed in film. This is definitely not for the lack of evidence. According to Monaco`s book, The Sixties, 1960-1969, more than half a million “incidents of desertion” happened between 1966 and 1969; uniformed officers were being killed using fragmentation grenades by their colleague troops at an shocking rate; and at the culmination of the sixties the entire units were declining to go into the battle in exceptional numbers. Within the course of few years, more than 100 underground newspapers got published by soldiers across the world; thousands joined both national and local anti-war GI organizations and thousands more demonstrated opposing the war at each key base in the world, including in Vietnam itself; the federal prisons and stockades were full of soldiers jailed for opposing the war and military. Yet not all today know these history-changing events. Nonetheless, Sir! No Sir! Attempts to change all that by doing four things: i. Brings back to life the GI movement history through the stories of people who were part and parcel of it; ii. Discloses the explosion of defiance which this movement resulted to with a never-before-seen archival material; iii. Scrutinize the profound impact which movement had on military as well as the war itself; iv. The element, 90 minute version, also voices the story of why and how the GI Movement has actually been deleted from the public memory. People who were part of this movement during the 1960’s had an intimate connection with it. Sir! No Sir! Discloses how, thirty years later, Bertolt Brecht`s poem that turn into an anthem of the GI Movement is still resonating: that is, a man is very valuable. He is capable of flying and he can kill. Thought he has one weakness: He can think. Just like the Vietnam War itself, GI Anti-war Movement commenced small and within a period of few years it had exploded into a major force which altered history. Just like the times in which it grew, this movement involved prearranged actions and spontaneous resistance as well as cultural upheaval. This movement was not characterized by one leader or organization. Rather, in the late sixties, groups of soldiers, numbering in hundreds and thousands, emerged to encounter the racism and war in the military. Individual defiance and Group action, from more than 500,000 GIs who quit over the course of war to the ineffable numbers who bore peace signs, avoided combat, and defied military discipline, formed a “Fuck the Army” counter-culture which threatened the whole military values of the time and altered the course of the war. Sir! No Sir!, unlike other movies about Vietnam- A Yank in Viet-Nam- Loosely splits the war and the movement into four main chapters, each replicating the politics, mood, and culture of the time it portrays as American society grew into increasingly polarized. As the administration of Johnson turns what was primarily a minor “Police Action” into an escalated war, alienated individuals and small groups inside the military who refuse to participate were severely punished: a fact that is contrary to the movie, A Yank in Viet-Nam, in which a Marine pilot lands in enemy territory after he survives a helicopter crash. Fortunately, rebels assist guide him through the thick jungles to safety. Enemies are embraced in the movie A yank in Viet-Nam whereas the enemies are severely punished in the movie Sir! No Sir! Lt. Henry Howe is actually sentenced to 24 months with hard labor just for appearing in an antiwar demonstration; the Ft. Hood 3 are also sentenced to 36 months with hard labor for snubbing duty in Vietnam; Private George Daniels and Corporal William Harvey are sentenced to 10 years in 1967 just for meeting up with other marines on the Camp Pendleton to converse whether Blacks need to fight in Vietnam. The war escalated just as the peace movement came to be an international mass movement. The soldiers began creating organizations and taking communal action: Black soldiers who rejected riot-control duty at the Democratic National Convention of 1968, are sentenced to one and half years each; As such, Long Binh Jail (adoringly named LBJ by the troops) and also the biggest military prison in Vietnam, is taken over by the Black soldiers who held it for close to 2 months; The Presidio 27–convicts in the stockade on Presidio Army Base inside San Francisco–were charged with mutiny which is a capital offense, since they refused to work following the death of a mentally ill prisoner; There is no doubt that "Sir! No Sir!" is not an impartial film and it inspires impassioned rebuttals. Contrary to Sir! No Sir!, A Yank in Viet-Nam is a movie that doesn`t portray hostility to the enemies. It was filmed wholly in South Vietnam in the course of Vietnam War. The movie follows a pilot, a U.S. Marine Corps, (Marshall Thompson) who is brought down over the jungle of Vietnamese. He meets Kieu Chinh, a female guerrilla fighter in his effort to get to safety, and a nationalist called Hong. As seen earlier in the movie Sir! No Sir!, where enemies and opposers of the war were jailed for years, it can contrarily be said that A Yank in Viet-Nam actually assisted out the perceived enemies. In this Vietnam war movie, a Marine lands in enemy territory after he survives a helicopter crash. Luckily, rebels assisted to guide him across the thick jungles to safety. On the way he saves a POW, and eventually ends up falling for the mans daughter. He started to love Sandra Brennan, Rovi. To see a young American pilot downed in the Vietnamese jungle in the Far East country where the United States is assisting to defend from invaders was a recipe for disaster. However, nationalist guerrillas attempt to sneak him to safety, something that is not usual regarding how the sixties films portrayed guerrilla fighters; always hostile to the “enemies”. Again this miraculous act happened at the time when the Vietnamese military troops, led by General Giap and Ho Chi Minh, were inspired by a blend of peasant nationalism and communist egalitarianism. Starting from a small movement only devoted to drive out the French, they had years of experience as guerrilla movement combating the Japanese and French, long established supply lines, and support from the U.S and China. They therefore knew the terrain very well and the mass of the Vietnamese people also knew U.S. invaders could not be their friends; instead, they were there to raid on them. As such, the marine pilot, Thompson, could have easily been murdered by the guerrilla even though it did not happen. This is a major contrast to what could have happened as far as the movie Sir! No Sir! Is concerned. Just as the enemies who opposed the war movement were sentenced to jail, an act of hostility, Marshall Thompson could as well have been treated the same or perhaps worse than the normal sentencing to prison. Along the bloody trail, Thomson and the leader of the group square off over an attractive gun-toting girl. The triangle is expediently fixed in a climactic skirmish, for the troops (U.S paratroopers) landed just in time. Even though "A Yank in Vietnam," coming from Allied Artists on the circuits, is standard film fare in almost every department, it has got one shining feature: it looks Vietnamese as the movie Sir! No Sir!. In contrast to the movies conventional content, as caught by forthright photography, are authentic backgrounds and native faces. A feature which is also replicated in the movie Sir! No Sir! Conclusion There have been various films made concerning Vietnam, Americas most combative war. As cinema is among the channels of our cultures most projecting forms of storytelling, our movies about this war required that we ensure that we tell the gospel truth to the future generations – bad or good- while also celebrating the men who fought in it. Its a rough juggling act, but I strongly believe that collectively, the movie Sir! No Sir! And A yank in Viet-Nam discussed above make an appropriate cinematic tribute to what is the most contentious conflicts or what was the subject in the film arena in the 60s as the movie audiences were decreasing due to the authority television was commanding. The key American film companies started to diversify to other forms of entertainment: TV movies, production of TV series, records, publishing. Increasingly the 60s saw major studios financed and circulated independently-produced local pictures. As such, made-for-TV movies turn out to be a regular feature of the network programming by the mid-decade. Majority of "runaway" film productions were now being made abroad in an attempt to save money. By 1965, the average ticket cost was no more than a dollar, while the average film budget cost was slightly more than 1.5 million dollars. By the end of the 60s, the film industry was much troubled and depressed. It experienced an all-time low which had been developing for nearly 25 years. This paper has talked about the sixties while comparing the movie Sir! No Sir! With a movie about Vietnam-A Yank in Viet-Nam. These two movies can be described as fare with one major outstanding virtue of what is expected to be, that is, it had a touch of Vietnamese theme. The cast was pre-dominated by a company in Hollywood and a team of movie technicians from Vietnam. The main characters of the movie Marshall Thompson, Jane Wardell and Jack Lewis each played a significant role in every scene of the movie. From the conversation, it`s clear that the troops in America are in good terms with the Vietnamese in eliminating the tides of the communist. The photographs captured the real background and the original faces which are in contrast to the ordinary contents of the film. However, the intense painful emotion of fear experienced in the war zones is not communicated through the pictures. The large, well-built, muscular Mario Barri does it though. He reckons to Mr. Thompson how different people they have fought starting with the Japanese, the French and the communist. In general, both the two movies (Sir! No Sir! And A yank in Viet-Nam), were documentaries directed by David Zeigier based and Marshall Thompson respectively on the Vietnam war in the military. Most of the people aware of this war because of the large protest in the US barrack also the bases of military. Numerous soldiers who aired their different views on the issue were sent to jail and some in exile. Work Cited Monaco, Paul. The Sixties, 1960-1969. New York: C. Scribner, 2001. Print. Read More