As I watched *Diên Biên Phu* (1992), I was reminded of all the American movies I’ve seen. This one is about a famous battle the French lost against the Vietnamese, made by the French. In this movie, a lot of soldiers don’t want to fight on the battlefield, quite unlike the enthusiasm one sees in movies like *Black Hawk Down*. Another element that comes up again and again is prayer. Strangely enough, I don’t remember any other war movies where priests come up again and again. And one more thing. The movie is strangely devoid of explosive close quarter combat. It’s all distant: Gunfire, artillery, people being shot by snipers, and two or three silhouettes at night is all you ever see of the enemy, until the very end, where the whole landscape seems to erupt with people climbing out of every hole and every ditch.
Recommended.
See also: Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Schlacht von Điện Biên Phủ.
(I didn’t know that the French foreign legion fighting in Diên Biên Phu consisted of 80% Germans – veterans of the 2nd World War, members of the “Waffen-SS”, war veterans that had been unable to reintegrate themselves into civil society...)
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