Houlihan, Jpseph Vietnam on the big Scren

How the Vietnam War Changed Hollywood

America, it is said, processes its traumas with the help of Hollywood, and few experiences were more traumatic than involvement in the Vietnam War. When the last US helicopters fled the American embassy compound during the fall of Saigon, they left behind a country ravaged by twenty years of death and destruction. They returned to a country that was damaged in other ways. The America that ended its involvement in Vietnam in 1975 was defeated, humiliated, divided and scarred. It was a confusing change for a nation that saw itself as being on the right side of history. Just a generation earlier, Americans had celebrated the bravery of the GIs and Marines who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima and Normandy. Now they were confronted with a uglier side of war: senseless casualties, disillusioned and mutinous soldiers, massacres of innocent civilians, and the shooting of unarmed student protesters. For a long time, it was impossible for America to process these experiences until Hollywood showed the way. The film industry had initially begun to treat Vietnam as a continuation of the Second World War. The action-packed John Wayne film The Green Berets (which was made with the full support of the Pentagon) had a simplistic we are the good guys message. However, as American casualties in Vietnam rose, social unrest broke out and the war aims became increasingly unclear, the film studios withdrew. After The Green Berets in 1968, no major films were made about the conflict until a decade later, when the controversial and groundbreaking film The Deer Hunter was released. The subject was considered too controversial, although some courageous filmmakers dealt with it in an indirect way (Soldier Blue was a retelling of the My Lai massacre, set in the Wild West). Finally, The Deer Hunter tore off the band-aid and shed light on the American experience in Vietnam. The portrayal of US soldiers as victims rather than heroes led to arguments in cinemas and questions in Congress. But it paved the way for the greatest series of war films ever made. Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many others rewrote the grammar of war films and helped a wounded nation come to terms with an unpopular war. This is the story of how these films came to be, how they were received at the time, and how they shaped the American experience in Vietnam. The names behind them are legends in the film industry, from directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Michael Cimino to actors such as John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Robert de Niro and Meryl Streep.