Background
Unlike many Hollywood Vietnam War blockbusters, Dîen Bîen Phu is, according to the director, more a docudrama based on real events, in the style of Tora! Tora! Tora!. Writer/director Pierre Schoendoerffer is a veteran of the battle; in 1952, volunteer Corporal Schoendoerffer joined the Service Cinématographique des Armées (French Army Cinematographic Service) as a cameraman.
On 11 March 1954, Schoendoerffer was injured at Dien Bien Phu, in a minor skirmish (coast 781 attack) before the main battle, and he was sent to the southern base located in Saigon aboard a C-47 transport plane. Since there were no other cameramen remaining on the battlefield, Schoendoerffer insisted on returning to document the event. Finally, on March 18, he was allowed to take off from the northern base Hanoi, located at 1H15 (252 km) from Dien Bien Phu, on a C-47 and to jump with the 5th Bawouan (Vietnamese Parachute Battalion) over Dien Bien Phu.
Schoendoerffer was still injured and wore bandages when he chose to return to the battlefield. Officers told him "it's wasted, don't go!" ("c'est foutu, n'y va pas!"), but he insisted as " had to be there to testify" as he planned to give his film to the pilots, after the battle, as an homage. However, nobody saw this footage since he destroyed his own camera and all his 60-second-films on May 7, except for six of them which were confiscated by the Viet Minh during an aborted jailbreak and ended up in the hands of Soviet cameraman Roman Karmen. As a 25-year-old corporal cameraman, Schoendoerffer was not actually a journalist, but the French Army did not interfere and let him shoot everything he wanted. His films were supposed to be sent to the rear on March 28, using a C-47 belonging to a military nurse named Geneviève de Galard, but the C-47 was damaged beyond repair by Viet Minh artillery that hit the Red Cross aircraft.
Schoendoerffer used a Bell & Howell 35mm black-and-white camera with three telephoto lenses mounted on a turret. This model is known for its highly flammable film but also for "its remarkable black and grey picture quality never seen again since" dixit Pierre Schoendoerffer.
On May 7, 1954, at 6 p.m., a half hour after the French ceasefire (except for the strongpoint Isabelle still fighting until May 8 1:00 a.m.) he was ordered to get out of his Parachute Commandment blockhouse, where he was waiting with the officers Bigeard and Langlais and the military nurse Geneviève de Galard and subsequently became a Viet Minh POW.
Once free, he became a war reporter-photographer for American magazines. In 1967, his Vietnam War black-and-white documentary, The Anderson Platoon (La Section Anderson), won an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Later Schoendoerffer was named Vice-President of the French Académie des Beaux Arts (Academy of Fine Arts).
Read more about this topic: Dien Bien Phu (film)
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