I was looking through the Imperial War Museum again and came across this picture of a “BLU-3 anti-personnel (‘Pineapple’) Bomblet.”
I was immediately reminded of a scene in a movie that was made in North Vietnam in 1969, Tiền Tuyến Gọi (The Front is Calling).
The movie is about a couple of young professors who are working to find ways to help people who suffer from shell shock. One of them, Khiêm, has been sent to the front to do work there, while the other, Huy, has stayed in Hanoi.
The movie starts with a scene of Huy giving a talk at the university.
The lecture hall is full, and everyone likes the talk.
Except for Huy’s father, an experienced professor, who leaves the lecture hall in the middle of his son’s talk. His daughter follows him, and asks what is wrong. The father explains that Huy’s ideas are not practical enough.
The movie then takes us to the family’s home and we see Khiêm arrive back from the front.
He pulls out one of these “pineapple” anti-personnel bomblets and shows it to Huy. Huy then passes it to his father.
The father inspects the bomblet with a true scientist’s expression of admiration for the technological sophistication that it represents.
He then shakes his head and says, “Those evil American imperialists will stop at nothing to trample on the people.”
The ultimate message of the movie is to say that scientists cannot sit in the comfort of a laboratory, separated from reality, and produce good science. They have to engage with the practical world, and for that, “the front is calling.”
My sense is that a lot of wartime propaganda (wherever it’s made) tends to target the hearts of the viewers and tries to stir their emotions. This film does the same but does so through a story about intellectuals. It’s a fascinating movie.
wow, I am impressed by the fact that you spotted the bomblet from this movie and the one from the Museum. BTW, doesn’t WordPress have a function to insert an image along with a link to the source of the image (if available)? would be more convenient to be able to click into the image and readers can go directly to the museum site. Thanks for showing this museum. hmhm… why are there some Chinese characters in the opening scene of the movie? 8_8
yea, I was going to link to the museum page that has the image, and I was also going to link to the Wikipedia page that explains what this bomblet was, but in the end I just got lazy because it’s pretty easy for anyone to search the museum site or to google for the Wikipedia page.
A decade or so ago I found some DVDs of old Vietnamese movies that were for sale on yesasia.com. In the 1960s, North Vietnam shared its movies with “fraternal Socialist” countries. The DVDs that I found were the digitized versions of some Vietnamese films that had been sent to China, dubbed in Mandarin, and which still exist in some archive somewhere in China.
Around the same time that these DVDs became available, the same films were released in Vietnam (in the original Vietnamese) on VCD. The quality of the “Chinese” versions is MUCH MUCH better than the versions that I have seen from Vietnam. However, the “problem” is that they are in Mandarin. . .
Several years ago I talked to some people and tried to tell them that they should take the Chinese DVDs and re-input Vietnamese dialog, but they said that they couldn’t do this since the movies had already been released/sold in Vietnam (but since when do Vietnamese care about copyrights??? khong hieu).
I can’t remember what this building where the opening lecture is held is called in Vietnamese (Dai Hoc Y??). I’ve heard some people call it the “Pharmacy School” in English. It’s not far from the Opera House. You must know exactly where it is. The scenes shot there are beautiful, and when you see scenes like those (in black and white) I think it becomes very clear where someone like Dang Nhat Minh got (at least some of) his aesthetic sense.
When you put aside war, destruction, propaganda, oppression, etc., amazingly there is still artistic beauty and intelligence. . . When that father holds up that bomb and criticizes the “evil American imperialists” at the same time that he admires the technological innovation in that terribly destructive device that was causing horror to countless innocent lives. . . I like that guy! Because that shows complexity. Sure, the rest of the movie tries to present a more focused/simplistic message. But that scene is fantastic because it shows complexity (and it shows this in aesthetically beautiful black and white film).
fascinating! i would love to see some of those films. thanks for this analysis!
Yea, the stills (screen captures) look really good, so it dawned on me that I should post some stuff on these movies. I’ll try to do so.
The shot of the father and daughter going up the stairs in the Pharmacy School – that’s a great scene, as you see the father walk down the stairs on one side and then walk up another staircase on the other. Fans of the Pharmacy School (and I think you know one) would love that.
Watching it this time, I noticed that there are times when they are showing Huy lecturing that we can see what is happening outside (through the windows). And what you see are military jeeps driving by. I doubt that that was planned.
That made me wonder, what cars were on the streets in Hanoi in 1969? Anything other than military jeeps?