Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Typically, DVDs offer added features that are not found on a film's/program's earlier VHS version. At the very least, one expects a DVD to offer the same content as the video. The producers of this DVD set, however, evidently decided to buck that trend. If you are looking for the same content that the original historical and influential video series contains, DO NOT buy this item. The first episode alone reveals several omissions, such as the "red termite" remark mentioned by another reviewer. (The remark, a memorably racist statement by a French official, clearly depicted the attitude of at least some of the French leadership at the time, who saw the Vietnamese rebels as "termites" --vermin to be exterminated. Not an unusual mind-set in colonizer/colonized relations.) Another blatant omission concerns the French exploitation of Vietnamese rubber plantation workers. Here, the DVD not only edits out footage of workers in a plantation (with extremely vivid images of the slicing of tree bark to extract the rubber), but it omits an entire interview with a Vietnamese national who describes the brutal treatment suffered by rubber workers. This man recalled a popular expression of the time in which the plantation workers were known as "fertilizer," because so many of those who died were buried beneath the trees among which they toiled. Unless you see the video, though, you'll never know this--because the DVD cuts all of it out. The edits I have seen so far (episode one) clearly seek to minimize Vietnamese suffering under the French colonial system. I can only imagine what the later episodes omit. The producers seem to want to put a fresh "spin" on their documentary-watering down harsh imagery and language, and thus sanitizing the war. This is a shameful achievement, and one that I find hard to believe PBS condones. It is all the more appalling given the stature of the original program. If you want the real thing, then get the VHS. And put pressure on PBS to release the series on DVD in its true, original form. It's worth noting that, on the PBS website for the documentary, even the official program transcript has been altered to reflect the "new and improved" version. Why would this highly touted documentary seek to rewrite its own lauded history? Are there political pressures at work? Who knows-maybe these questions will lead to the creation of a new documentary. One that answers the question: Why did American Experience and PBS gut their own masterpiece?