Background
In summer 1966, France Soir news magazine director and French public channel ORTF producer Pierre Lazareff proposed that war reporter and director Pierre Schoendoerffer complete his "unachieved" war documentary he did in 1954.
Back in May 1954, Schoendoerffer was covering the First Indochina War for the French army's cinematographic service SCA. At the siege of Dien Bien Phu he filmed the battle between the French Union forces and the Viet Minh but his reels were captured when he surrendered to the enemy.
After the departure of the French forces from Vietnam in 1956 the U.S. Army replaced it several years later and fighting soon flared again, the beginning of the Vietnam War.
Arguing that "the war was the same, the French only switching with the Americans", Lazareff convinced the French veteran to return to Vietnam as a kind of second chance to complete his war documentary.
Read more about this topic: The Anderson Platoon
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