Classic doc

VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY (1983, revised 1997) (Grade: A-minus)

Airing eight years after the fall of Saigon, and in production for six of those years, PBS's definitive documentary about the war in Vietnam is a compelling -- and at times horrifying -- account of America's decades-long involvement in Southeast Asia. The series (originally 13 episodes, edited down to 11 for its re-airing in 1997) is refreshingly old-school in its technology; we get talking heads, simplistic maps and graphics -- simple storytelling.

And we get the rawest of film footage. The camera doesn't blink at the horrors of war. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did on Japan and Germany combined during World War II. Even as late as December 1972, the intense bombing of Hanoi during the final stages of the Paris peace talks was compared to the devastation of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. We see body parts, scorched earth, starvation. Obscure film sources from a variety of sources help tell a comprehensive story.

The film is noticeably even-handed, with a generous share of Vietnamese talking heads, from both the North and South. We get the big American names, spanning from Rostow to Kissinger, but also the voices of soldiers and Marines. Episode 4 revolves around the stories of two U.S. military men. The filmmakers focus more on the front lines than on the view from our shores; we get very little from the perspective of protesters or network broadcasters.

The storytelling and the visuals are top rate. Episode 8 (about Cambodia and Laos) begins and ends with the same chilling scene: A toddler walks alone down a street in Phnom Penh in June 1979, six months after the Vietnamese defeat of the murderous Khmer Rouge, and four years after the Khmer Rouge had defeated the American-backed regime in Cambodia. The camera cuts from the street scene to close-ups of bones and skulls. The Khmer Rouge, from 1975 to 1979, the narrator intones, "went on to starve or slaughter hundreds of thousands, perhaps two million Cambodians; nobody knows." The ninth episode offers a scene of a cocky Nixon in mid-1972 taunting the reporters and editors who would soon bring him down; it ends with the funeral of LBJ, followed days later by the signing of the January 1973 peace agreement between the United States and the North, and then by the parallel release of American POWs and North Vietnamese prisoners as the country itself remained very much in turmoil.

It's a powerful story.

In memory of Vietnam veteran Carroll Hawley.

The series, based on Stanley Karnow's authoritative account, is available on DVD and on YouTube.