And the one thing I could see, is how timely it was. I could EASILY see this film being updated to current times.
Although this film is highly uneven and at times a bit incongruent and could use some editing, I enjoyed it immensely. I mean look at the cast for crying out loud! Joseph Cotton! Melvyn Douglas! Richard Widmark! Veteran Character Actor Richard Jaeckel! Burt Lancaster! Charles Durning! You can't go wrong there.
Yeah, if you're a follower of Michael Moore/Rosie O'Donnell conspiracy doublespeak I guess it would be "easy to see how this could be updated".
Maybe instead though, we should look back at how this film was dishonest to the core in its OWN time. How Robert Aldrich decided to take what was just a good suspense novel about a MAJOR who had falsely been convicted of murder doing this for himself, and instead decided to give us a pretentious dose of left-wing sermonizing about the evils of Vietnam that I would note are *entirely* fabrications on his part that bear no resemblance to reality. In this post-Cold War world, where one thing that should be apparent to us is that the United States struggle against communist totalitarianism was a just struggle, and where in this world where the plight of the Boat People and the Cambodian Holocaust should sweep aside any lingering questions on the morality of the Vietnam War itself (that in fact, this was a war America should have won, and but for the anti-war movement exercising its pressure to cause Congressional betrayal of the South in 1975, we might have still seen the just result prevail), what isn't timely is a relic of 1970s "blame America first" doublespeak that became so faddish during that time (and still is) where anything that has to do with America fighting the Cold War is cast in either a moral equivalence light at best, or a sinister purpose for the most part. That is what makes a film like "Twilight's Last Gleaming" and a slew of similar films from this era so utterly unwatchable to me.
"Maybe instead though, we should look back at how this film was dishonest to the core in its OWN time."
Many of the ideas and supposed policies of the United States government seen in the film are based on the book "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" by none other than Henry Kissenger. So the relationship between proxy wars and foreign policy in the nuclear age is far from 'dishonest'.
"-and instead decided to give us a pretentious dose of left-wing sermonizing about the evils of Vietnam that I would note are *entirely* fabrications on his part that bear no resemblance to reality."
The notion that the United States may have done more harm than good in Vietnam, killed innocent civilians, and failed to win the war is a fabrication? While I certainly grant you that the film has a great deal of opinion statements, I hope you can concede that the outrage among many members of the American public in regaurds to Vietnam may, in some cases, at least be based in reality. What part of the film's political commentary is not based in reality??
"-where one thing that should be apparent to us is that the United States struggle against communist totalitarianism was a just struggle,"
Yes, but the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. Its certainly possible that, in the case of Vietnam, our actions were not the BEST way to go about fighting against that enemy. I guess thats just opinion.
"(that in fact, this was a war America should have won, and but for the anti-war movement exercising its pressure to cause Congressional betrayal of the South in 1975, we might have still seen the just result prevail),"
Is this why Secretary of Defense McNamara later said that there came a point in the Vietnam war where we realized that we were NOT going to win? Do you think the fact that we lost the Vietnam war had anything to do with the way in which it was fought? Do the two Presidential administrations and numerous Generals who handled it share no responsibility for the final outcome?
I hope you might be able to clarify some of these bold assertions.
In the end, 'Twilight's Last Gleaming' is a well made film and, yes, also a platform for a good deal of political and anti-Vietnam conversation. The unfortunate fact is that the war in Vietnam upset a great many Americans and took a strong toll on the American veterans that were asked to fight it. This film showed that palpable anger that excisted in the American mind in the early to mid 1970's. It contains alot of opinions, yes. But you certainly don't need to be a lover of Rosie O'Donell and Micheal Moore in order to appretiate it.
***Many of the ideas and supposed policies of the United States government seen in the film are based on the book "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" by none other than Henry Kissenger. So the relationship between proxy wars and foreign policy in the nuclear age is far from 'dishonest'***
Oh yes it is dishonest since (1) Kissenger wrote that book in the late 1950s when he wasn't even part of the government and was just an academic putting forth his own opinions as a private citizen and (2) that *isn't* the explanation for why America chose to hold the line in Vietnam, it was the "Domino Theory" which as JFK said publicly in September 1963, he firmly believed in.
***The notion that the United States may have done more harm than good in Vietnam, killed innocent civilians, and failed to win the war is a fabrication?*****
Yes, considering that what followed as a result of American defeat (or more properly the betrayal of our ally, the South Vietnamese) was the human tragedy of hundreds of thousands of Boat People drowned in the South China Sea and next door a Holocaust in Cambodia by the Khmer Rogue, whose coming to power was also the result of American defeat.
***What part of the film's political commentary is not based in reality??****
That the United States waged a war knowing they couldn't win. That is a crock of the first order considering that most revisionist studies that are coming out are making it clear that in 1972, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed America had *succeeded* in keeping a formula in place for the preservation of South Vietnamese indepenence....all of which was then flushed away when Congress stabbed the South Vietnamese in the back in 1974-75 when they cut back aid and gave a green light to Hanoi to get away with the very kind of offensive they *failed* with in 1972. America fought this war trying to preserve South Vietnamese independence and to PREVENT the human tragedies of the Boat People and the Cambodian Holocaust, and our failure to have succeeded in that is the real shame of Vietnam.
***his why Secretary of Defense McNamara later said that there came a point in the Vietnam war where we realized that we were NOT going to win?***
This is where we could use a reality check. Robert McNamara, the architect of the timid strategy in Vietnam (as well as being one of those who forced America to take over the burden of the fighting when he encouraged the coup against Diem in 1963), was out of the government by early 1968 which was *before* the Tet Offensive demonstrated just how little popular support the Vietcong actually had among the South Vietnamese. Had LBJ not been spooked by inaccurate media reports of a "psychological victory" for the enemy and simply applied pressure at that moment, the war in fact probably could have been won at that point in time.
But that point aside, the next four years under Nixon, when McNamara was no longer around, saw Vietnamization work to the point where American and South Vietnamese forces together could repel the Easter Offensive in 1972, AND where the VC was no longer a meaningful force at all. McNamara was merely responsible for the bungled strategy that was keeping America from having a good chance at winning the war during the Johnson Presidency, but he is in no position to judge what was done *after* 1968 when there was an effort made by the Nixon Administration to honor our committments and get America out *without* losing. Nixon's resignation because of Watergate, and the capturing of the Democratic Party by the McGovern wing, alas, sealed the fate of the South Vietnamese.
To me, it would be a LOT more plausible if a man who spent several years tortured in a Vietnamese prison camp instead decided to do something brazen and make a stance against the likes of Jane Fonda and company. The context of this film made little sense back then, and in the post-Cold War world where the anti-Cold War message of this film (which I suppose was, forget about being tough with Soviet totalitarianism and all will be good in the world) makes it laughably and for me personally, as offensively dated as a film that shows someone assailing Britain in 1938 for being too tough with Germany.
"-that *isn't* the explanation for why America chose to hold the line in Vietnam, it was the "Domino Theory" which as JFK said publicly in September 1963, he firmly believed in."
Fair enough but there were two other administrations that came after JFK and numerous escalations of the war. Is it not possible for a nation to go to war for multiple different reasons? Isn't 'Twlight's Last Gleaming' simply putting out a somewhat valid theory about a historic event into the context of a fictional film?
"-was the human tragedy of hundreds of thousands of Boat People drowned in the South China Sea and next door a Holocaust in Cambodia by the Khmer Rogue, whose coming to power was also the result of American defeat."
So we should have stayed even longer? Perhaps another 30,000-40,000 American lives would have stopped such a genocide? Maybe if we can commit a small genocide on our own people we'll be able to stop one from happening in another country, eh?
"Had LBJ not been spooked by inaccurate media reports of a "psychological victory" for the enemy and simply applied pressure at that moment, the war in fact probably could have been won at that point in time."
Well, LBJ's secretary of defense would disagree. Although I certainly do concede that he cannot really judge post-1968 events in the war.
So you're telling me that there is really no plausible way that America could have lost in Vietnam if Richard Nixon had served out the rest of his term? A bold statement but perhaps not a totally unrealistic one.
"To me, it would be a LOT more plausible if a man who spent several years tortured in a Vietnamese prison camp instead decided to do something brazen and make a stance against the likes of Jane Fonda and company."
Are you a Vietnam vet by any chance? I just have to ask because I have talked to numerous different Vietnam veterans who, to this day, retain a great deal of anger towards thier government. While they may not be eager to start a nuclear war, many of them share the same views and animosity towards the government that Burt Lancaster's character displayed. While I concede that they are certainly not huge fans of Jane Fonda, they are generally much more upset with thier government than anything else.
***Fair enough but there were two other administrations that came after JFK and numerous escalations of the war. Is it not possible for a nation to go to war for multiple different reasons? Isn't 'Twlight's Last Gleaming' simply putting out a somewhat valid theory about a historic event into the context of a fictional film? *****
Not when there was no evidence at the time to support that assumption and the historical record shows nothing like that since. LBJ went in because he was left with a colossal mess left to him by JFK who was responsible for making Vietnam an American war when he ordered the coup against Diem, which was what forced America to take over fighting the war in the name of the Domino theory.
Richard Nixon believed in the same thing too, that defeat in Vietnam would mean a detriment to America's ability to get meaningful treaties done with the Communist superpowers. He thought the only way there could be a SALT treaty would be if a tough line was maintained, and he was proved right when the Soviets elected not to cancel the Moscow summit at the same time American efforts increased to repel the Easter Offensive.
***So we should have stayed even longer? Perhaps another 30,000-40,000 American lives would have stopped such a genocide? *****
We should have enforced the Paris Peace Accords and maintained aid levels to South Vietnam. That was the mechanism left in place for *two years* after America's role ended and it was only when Congress kowtowed to the anti-war wing of its party and cut off all aid to the South that Hanoi went ahead with the very same thing they did in 1972, knowing this time they could get away with it. What your comment overlooks is that Vietnamization had *worked* provided that America was willing to keep providing necessary assistance to our ally. Instead, we stabbed our ally in the back thanks to the anti-war movement who ended up proving what Yuri Andropov once said, that the war in Vietnam from the Soviet perspective would not be won on the battlefield but in the streets of America.
***Well, LBJ's secretary of defense would disagree.****
Read Peter Braestrup's "Big Story" and find out how the press was dead wrong in their coverage of Tet, and read also the accounts of other LBJ advisors like Walt Rostow who understood that Tet was a military victory that should have demonstrated that the VC was not resurgent but had just destroyed themselves. The VC was never an effective fighting force after Tet, and the ultimate proof was how it took the regular North Vietnamese army to win for Hanoi, not the alleged "insurgent" movement which was entirely their own creation to begin with.
***So you're telling me that there is really no plausible way that America could have lost in Vietnam if Richard Nixon had served out the rest of his term? A bold statement but perhaps not a totally unrealistic one. ****
I believe that if Nixon hadn't destroyed his Presidency with Watergate, he might have taken a gamble and sent the B-52s back in the instant Hanoi's tanks went into the South and that would have sent a signal to Hanoi that America meant what it said about standing by her allies.
"To me, it would be a LOT more plausible if a man who spent several years tortured in a Vietnamese prison camp instead decided to do something brazen and make a stance against the likes of Jane Fonda and company."
I am not a Veteran, I am a history teacher and specialist in post-1945 America. To me, the story of American participation in the Cold War is a story that has not been told properly in many circles, especially with regard to Vietnam and I just feel that the time is long overdue for the real failure in Vietnam to be placed in large measure on the anti-war movement. Yes, all of the administrations made mistakes in policy and strategy which should be noted, and yes, veterans also should have reason to be mad at their government for a lot of things they did, but it was the same anti-war movement that cheered for Hanoi that also was responsible for spitting on them and denouncing them as baby-killers and also spreading tales of them being treated well in prison camps, which they were not.
But to take this back to the film itself, this movie could have been a gripping, suspenseful film if the simple plot of the novel had been kept and Lancaster been like *Major* Dell in the novel, a man who had been railroaded for killing his wife and who was getting back at the government for letting him down in that sense. That story I can buy in the context of a disturbed man with a legit personal grievance taking action, but when its placed in a broader editorial comment on Vietnam and the Cold War struggle, that to me comes off as pretentious.
Thank you for adressing these issues. You make some interesting points and I admit that I am only somewhat farmiliar with the Vietnam war as a whole. I would very much like to read Peter Braestrup's "Big Story" in regaurds to the press coverage of Vietnam and the obvious strength of the anti-war movement in American politics.
I would never seek to defend individuals like Jane Fonda, I simply believe in holding those in government directly responsible for their actions, and mistakes, in the Vietnam war. That much we seem to agree on.
"-a man who had been railroaded for killing his wife and who was getting back at the government for letting him down in that sense. That story I can buy in the context of a disturbed man with a legit personal grievance taking action, but when its placed in a broader editorial comment on Vietnam and the Cold War struggle, that to me comes off as pretentious."
I guess pretentious wouldn't be a bad word to describe elements of this film especially considering Burt Lancaster's extremley liberal stance on issues like Vietnam and the way it translated into the films he acted in.
On a minor note, I have had some trouble finding the 'Viper 3' novel. Have you read it? Does the novel have any commentary on Vietnam whatsoever or are the protagonists main motivations simply revenge? Is the ending at all similar? Forgive me for asking so many questions in regaurds to the novel but I've heard good things about it and I've had a hell of a time finding it in print anywhere.
****On a minor note, I have had some trouble finding the 'Viper 3' novel. Have you read it? Does the novel have any commentary on Vietnam whatsoever or are the protagonists main motivations simply revenge? Is the ending at all similar? Forgive me for asking so many questions in regaurds to the novel but I've heard good things about it and I've had a hell of a time finding it in print anywhere. *****
Vietnam is not an issue at all in the novel. Major Dell is just in it for himself. The novel ends with the President arriving with the money and submitting himself as a hostage, and while it's been 20 years since I read the novel the implication was kind of that Dell was ready to give up and that the government had a sympathetic ear to his plight now. My memory's fuzzy on that but neither the President, nor Dell are killed.
Very interesting. Thanks for the info.
shareI did watch this movie on one of my old VHS tapes last night. The Vietnam War can be looked at from many different angles. We can't look at it in hindsight. At the time, Communism was on a roll and people in those countries were suffering (20 million Chinese starved to death that decade). The anti-war movement likely extended the war, as the movement was unpopular to the masses at the time. It was their methods and not the message that was unpopular. When Jane Fonda sat on a tank in North Vietnam that was a defining moment.
It's probability unfair to blame the anti-war movement because they did not achieve their objectives. They couldn't control the extreme elements that kept the movement unpopular. The liberal media will not report this story. Think I am wrong, didn't Richard Nixon win a landslide victory in 1972? When the protest movement died after the election, then public turned against the war and it started to downsize rather quickly.
I served in Vietnam and the people, all 100%, could not have been nicer. This would exclude the remote villages. Unlike the current situation where we can trust only about 50%. It makes me sad that we deserted them, but it may have been the correct decision. The fact that the U.S. never invaded the North, means the movie is basically correct, we never played to win. The U.S. could have crushed the North by simply taking their ports and cities (much like what we did in Iraq), thereby denying them their Russians Supplies. This could have been done in months.
In Viet Nam, the battle was against the Russian supplied North. Without the Russians, the war would have been over.
Pay no attention to Eric. He knows nothing of history and is a major Jesus freak (newsflash Eric: God's not real).
The Vietnam War was indefensible and evil. Vietnam gained independence, held elections and voted for Ho Chi Minh. They wanted him. End of story. The US hated this, split the country in half to create the illusion that the South, run by a dictator they put in place, was at odds with the north. In fact, the South hated their little US puppet dictator and supported Ho Chi Minh. The US had no business deciding the fate of another nation. In fact, the US and France shot down Ho Chi Mingh's attempts to get independence in 1919 and 1920.
People like Eric are all the same breed: Jesus freaks, ultra patriotics who fear communist boogeymen. All of Latin America has been brutalized by these freaks and is only now recovering. Countries can sort out their own crap and in a much more bloodless manner if the US Empire stays out. But of course then it wouldnt be a greedy Empire, would it?
Yawn, yawn. Typical silly blatherings from a Far Left nutjob who like all Far Left nutjobs, whitewash all atrocities committed by the god that failed, Communism, because at heart they still believe in the fundamental goodness of the idea of communism.
The statistics though do not lie, as "The Black Book Of Communism" tells us with in excess of 80 to 90 million dead in the 20th century alone under all Communist regimes (which incidentally is a higher number than all the "wars of religion" put together). The typical nutjob response though is to just take the Stalin mentality of purging the facts from existence and arguing on as if they do not exist and thus do not need to be responded to. Which remains their perpetual problem.
As for Vietnam, let us deal with realites then stale, warmed over cliches from New Left propaganda sheets of the 1960s.
#1-South Vietnam did *not* vote for Ho Chi Minh. You're now saying something not even an anti-war person would utter for fear of looking like a moron, which you are. Vietnam was partitioned in 1954 at the Geneva Conference which created two separate nations. And guess what happened afterwards? First, Ho Chi Minh started slaughtering all non-communist nationalist groups in the North (in keeping with the purge mentality begun by his idol Lenin in Russia), and then we had a flight of one million refugees to the South who weren't about to live under Ho's non-existent benevolence. Some well-liked figure that was!
#2-Realizing that if he did a conventional style invasion like North Korea did of the South it would invite a response, Ho created the Vietcong and through subterfuge presented them as an indigenous movement in the South when they were nothing more than the manufactured creation of the North (something they themselves boast about today). This was a terror group aimed at conquering a nation that compared to the North Vietnamese was a much freer society, and also not a lackey for the interests of totalitarian communist expansion.
#3-The Vietcong never enjoyed any popular support. The Tet Offensive was their one chance to get the population to rise up and join them and none of them did.
#4-North Vietnam only won this war when America left, and refused to honor its committments to an ally. The ripple effect was a human rights nightmare for South Vietnam but Cambodia as well where the three million slaughtered by the Khmer Rogue is the blood on the hands of the anti-war movement in full, especially those who cast America's opponents in the phony role of heroes.
I'll await with amusement your response complete with further rear-end smooching of Stalin, Mao, Ho, Castro and every other communist butcher your pathetic ilk prefers to admire because of your own bigoted hatred of Western Civilization. :)