This old post was from one of my favorite bloggers, Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist. It is now unavailable.
With all the press (positive reviews and some fascinating critical views) about the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick series on Vietnam, Peter Davis’ brilliant 1974 documentary seems to have been forgotten—once again. When the 1983 PBS series Vietnam: A Television History came out, I was in college majoring in journalism. I was fascinated by the miniseries based on Stanley Karnow’s 784-page tome. My mentor, William A. Dorman, a journalism professor at California State University, Sacramento, told me to skip the book and the miniseries and watch Davis’ “Hearts and Minds.”
For being only a fraction of the 1983 PBS series’ running time, I found “Hearts and Minds” a much better presentation of U.S. involvement in the war. It asks the hard questions. Comparing the 1983 series with “Hearts and Minds” feels familiar when reading criticisms of the Burns/Novick work vis-à-vis the 1974 Davis film. In trying to be fair and balanced, the Burns/Novick series misses the mark when it comes to the U.S.’ costly Cold War doctrine and its toll on Third World countries like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
I haven’t seen the Burns/Novick work yet. Like all TV series I watch, I’ll binge-watch all the episodes over a few nights sometime in the future.
Here is the trailer to Davis’ film on YouTube.com. I believe it is also available on Prime Video for a few dollars.
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