It is unbelievable how incompetent this film director is! Pierre Schoendoerffer certainly doesn't know his business, AT ALL!
Everything is inept: the camera doesn't know where to go (say, meaninglessly aiming at a puddle of water in the wirport; or, again, meaninglessly shooting against lumination, from the back of a platoon of soldiers......), the soundtrack never wakes up from the director's reverie of his school-yard drill, and the "actors"---if they can be called that! The plot is non-existent: the director apparently believes that, since Dien Bien Phu was such a catastrophy for the Gauls, no plot would have made the audience feel anything like a purpose anyway; so why bother?!
Some say that this movie talks too much. Let me assure you you will be very misled to think it is some stereotypically clever French dialogue that cheats you out of more gutteral pleasure ---no Sir! You wi…
