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Amazon.com French documentarian Pierre Schoendorffer served as a combat soldier in Vietnam in the 1950s during France's quagmire. In the fall of 1966, he returned with a cameraman and spent six weeks with an American infantry platoon. This film, which won a 1968 Best Foreign Documentary Oscar, is stark and riveting. Commanded by a West Point graduate, Lieutenant Joseph Anderson, the 33-man platoon Schoendorffer traveled with was a cross-section of America. Perhaps as the film was shot relatively early in the war, the soldiers still seem motivated and even naive, though it seems to be dawning on everyone that their task may well be hopeless. Exhausting patrols to hunt the Viet Cong turn up nothing but deserted camps, and at one point when the platoon is taking heavy gunfire, you can hear an American yelling that he can't tell where the shooting is coming from. Schoendorffer refrains from making any political statements and offers only the most minimal narration to the black-and-white footage, none of which appears to have been staged for the camera. When the body of a young soldier killed in an ambush is loaded aboard a helicopter, the pain of the scene is palpable. At one point the platoon is shown getting a detailed briefing on a mission, only to have the plans abruptly change and the helicopters drop them into a battle where they have virtually no idea what their role is supposed to be. The Anderson Platoon doesn't tell you, it shows you, and this remarkable film resonates deeply. --Robert J. McNamara ... Read more Reviews (9) 
Not a Hollywood production...
Going through some reviews, I understand what their disappointment might be. This is not a documentary produced by Hollywood or by a major movie Cy. This is the result of 6 weeks shooting, on the field, with the troop, in the very conditions the soldiers lived then and there, a completely accurate picture of what their lifes really were. Some point out the low camera angle in some parts, but I guess the cameraman couldn't simply stand up and record whereas the Vietcong were shooting at them ! Risk was there and the movie team (three people) could be killed every moment...Just to show what the soldier's life is. Not more, not less. The american awards it received are simply telling how people liked it then, in 1966. This documentary is simply human. A must see.
Not Exactly a Documentary
Indeed, as a "This is what the entire Vietnam Intervention was like in its entirety" documentary, this falls far short. However, remove the "entirety" part, (which was probably never the goal, anyway) and "The Anderson Platoon" is revealed to be a brilliantly straightforward and nonjudgemental microscopic view of "a pawn in a much larger game." If one is beginning a collection of Vietnam Intervention nonfiction, don't start here; still, make sure to include this before the finish.
Six weeks with an infrantry platoon in Vietnam circa 1967
This documentary from 1967 won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Director Pierre Schoendoerffer focuses on an integrated American combat platoon of African-American and Hispanic troops in Vietnam commanded by Lt. Joseph B. Anderson, an African-American graduate of West Point. Schoendoerffer had served his own time in Vietnam, having been a veteran of France's Indochina war against the guerrillas of Ho Chi Mihn. Schoendoerffer spent six weeks with the platoon filming their search and destroy combat missions, interrogations of prisoners, life at the front, and visits to a local city on R&R. Narrated by actor Stuart Whitman, "The Anderson Platoon" provides a first hand record of what the war was like for the grunts, where nothing is more important that survival, not even friendship or completing your mission. What it shows us is often more mundane than profound, but the goal here is clearly to preserve a documentary record of what it was like in that time and place. The best thing I can say about "The Anderson Platoon" is that it provided a much better sense of Vietnam than "Platoon," or any other dramatic film I have seen. This may have to do with the shortcomings of Hollywood, which always seemed to be recycling World War II films to set in Vietnam, but I think it has more to do with the cinema verite of the documentary. No, it is not a great documentary, but it is a compelling record of simply what it was "really" like, more than most of us ever got to understand from the evening news or million dollar movies.
Highly Dissapointed
Although it was somewhat interesting seeing actual footage of an infantry platoon, I was very dissapointed with this film. It was far to short, however it seemed to drag on endlessly. There is only one action scene in the documentary at the very end, which is it's highpoint...as low as it was. I found it quite pointless to film a platoon in vietnam and then say, this person died two weeks from now...this person died four days from now..." I know that people died in vietnam, unfortunately, I still don't know how they fought.
Disappointing
I ordered this video based on the overwhelmingly high marks other viewers gave, but I cannot concur. Although some of the action scenes were enough to evoke strong emotion, overall the video is replete with irrelevant scenes like the ankle-level footage of the soldier's footsteps; bad music and nearly indecipherable narration. English subtitles would be a plus. I can't decide whether the high point was the soldier buying his "girlfriend" a guitar while on R&R, or the urination scene.
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