Le Crabe-Tambour
Vietnam - Here and There • 2h 0m
Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jean Rochefort, Jacques Perrin, Claude Rich, Jacques Dufilho • 1977 • 120 minutes
A French naval frigate crosses the Atlantic, bringing supplies and medical care to the French fishing fleet off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. On board are three veteran officers whose lives are interlinked with the legendary Lt. Willsdorf (Jacques Perrin). Willsdorf served in Indochina and Algeria and now helms a trawler fishing one of the harshest environments on the planet.
Through flashbacks, the frigate’s dying captain (Jean Rochefort), ship’s doctor (Claude Rich), and chief engineer (Jacques Dufilho), tell the story of the larger-than-life Willsdorf: a soldier who fought for a dying empire on two continents, tried to navigate from Vietnam to France on a rotting sailboat, survived captivity as a POW, and was eventually sentenced to prison for his role in a failed putsch aimed at keeping Algeria French.
Featuring some of the greatest maritime footage ever shot, LE CRABE-TAMBOUR is a layered and powerful adventure exploring ideas of honor, duty, and colonialism and its aftermath, Directed by Oscar-winner Pierre Schoendoerffer, and based on his novel of the same name, the film is something of a sequel to Schoendoerffer’s equally masterful THE 317th PLATOON, which featured Lt. Willsdorf’s brother as one of its main characters.
Up Next in Vietnam - Here and There
-
Do You Remember Vietnam?
Directed by David I. Munro • Documentary • 2006 • 52 minutes
In 1978, three years after the fall of Saigon, John Pilger went back to Vietnam to find out what had happened under the new regime.
He talks with a young tour guide at a war crimes museum, who had been imprisoned in the infamous US ti...
-
Investigation of a Flame
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • With Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan • 2001 • 45 minutes
"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house... The time is past whe...
-
Last Summer Won't Happen
Directed by Peter Gessner & Tom Hurwitz • Documentary • With Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Tom Osha Neuman, Phil Ochs • 2002 • 58 minutes
Shot in 1968, one year after the Summer of Love, LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN is a critical yet sympathetic examination of the anti-war movement in New York C...
