DVD : Vietnam War With Walter Cronkite
from: 1985 CBS News Video Library
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0011301630834
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, NTSC
Label: 1985 CBS News Video Library
Manufacturer: 1985 CBS News Video Library
Number Of Discs: 3
Number Of Items: 3
Publisher: 1985 CBS News Video Library
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 01, 2008
Running Time: 720 minutes
Sales Rank: 13677
Studio: 1985 CBS News Video Library
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
For decades, the war in Vietnam was the central drama on the stage of Southeast Asia. It was an intensely publicized war, the first television war that came roaring into the living rooms of America every night. Walter Cronkite tells the story of the long and divisive conflict as seen through the eyes of CBS News. Dan Rather, Morley Safer and Ed Bradley report the stories of American courage, failed programs, an elusive enemy and ultimately an end to a tragic war. It is all graphically shown in these superb CBS documentaries which tell the story of the most divisive war in American history and its effect on those who fought it.
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
When deciding on a good Vietnam documentary I knew I wanted something extensive and with plenty of first hand accounts. This brought me to this DVD and the PBS Television History of Vietnam DVD. After reading the reviews of the PBS version I was dismayed to see that there were things left out from the original production and decided on the Cronkite set. With all that said, I'm not sure how much of the PBS series duplicates the footage on this series, nor do I know if this series includes parts that were left out of the PBS series. I never saw the PBS series so I cannot comment on a comparison between the PBS set and this one. It would certainly be something I'd like to know, so if anyone has seen both and would like to comment, please do.
So, in looking at this documentary on its own, I can say without hesitation that it was immensely entertaining and informative. What you are getting is about 12 hours of CBS news footage. Some of it has narration by Cronkite to bring the viewer into the scene and frame a specific topic or event, but the majority of footage is simply the news broadcasts of the day as they were shown back then. The set is divided into 11 different parts. These episodes follow a loose chronology beginning with The French falling at Dien Bien Phu and going all the way up to the fall of Saigon. However, the episodes are more thematic and therefore jump around in time.
The stories selected for the DVD are engrossing. I didn't find ... Read More
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I used portions of the DVD in a course I taught on the "History of Television". Many of the segments are the closest thing that you can come to recreating for students today what was meant by the often used phrase "living room war" or "television war"...of how television affected Americans' perception of the war and the power that the visual image had in emotionally affecting viewers. Many of my college students were profoundly affected themselves in viewing images from those CBS news reports--such as the report on "enemy body counts", where a helicopter airlifts a netload of Vietnamese corpses or a segment where we learn of young Americans who eventually died in the process of claiming and relinquishing nameless hills. The students experienced first-hand a sense of what it was like in the 1960s/1970s to turn on your television and have to deal with war and death, and the cognitive dissonance the nearly 40-year-old images created in their minds.
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These are the evening news stories I grew up with. It's a great experience to see them again years later, with the perspective we have today. If you like this series you might also enjoy John Laurence's book about his years as a television reporter in Vietnam: "The Cat From Hue."
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This is a great look into the past at scenes of the Vietnam War we rarely see. A good visual experience of the past and of what our fathers and mothers endured. A great set that I recommend to all, and definately as a teaching tool in our schools and universities.
1LT Daniel Allen Hill
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This DVD set is one of the better visual retrospectives available on the Vietnam War, as it provides a strong human interest angle and not just coverage of the military and political issues. This series has excellent footage going back to the origins of the War in the 1950s and continuing up to the frantic last days during the evacuation in 1975. The combat footage is real time, as many well-known correspondents and producers today began their careers in this war. Say what you will about Dan Rather, but he and his cohorts had a lot of guts to bring in some of those stories, unarmed and sometimes under direct fire from the enemy. The honest portrayal of the suffering of villagers, a corrupt South Vietnamese government, and the evolution of many GIs from hawk to disillusioned short-timer are all covered here. The reports are often so stark in their honesty that after Vietnam, the US military vowed to never again allow the media such open access to their combat areas. We talk of "embedded reporters" now, but it is a joke compared to Vietnam. There are numerous candid interviews here that depict the best and worst of the American military, courageous soldiers as well as those who disobeyed orders. As a former Army infantryman who came in at the end of this era, I see nothing here that is in conflict with what I experienced. Many of these reports will be useful for history teachers (as I am) and their students, most of whom now have little appreciation for what the Vietnam War was like. ... Read More
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