French director whose army service in Indochina inspired him to make one of the finest modern war films
There is a striking circularity to the story of Pierre Schoendoerffer, the French director of one of the finest war films ever made. It was his frustrated passion for cinema that led him to sign up for the French Army in the hope of becoming a professional film-maker. And it was the French Army that gave him his greatest subject as a director: war in the tropical jungle of Vietnam. His La 317è Section (1965) is one of the defining evocations of modern combat on screen.
Schoendoerffer was born in 1928 at Chamalières in the Auvergne, to a family of Alsatian origin who had chosen French citizenship over German after the Franco-Prussian War. He was raised on adventure stories: while at school in Annecy, where his father ran a hospital, he read Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad and Jack London. A novel by Joseph Kessel, Fortune Carrée, inspired him to volunteer for life on a trawler at the end the war.
That shift was followed by a stint on a Swedish cargo ship the next summer. But the young man longed to recount adventures as well as live them. Film was another passion, and he began trying to get into the world of cinema, only to find that he lacked the necessary contacts to be admitted into a world that he would always liken to “Kafka’s castle”. For all his success, Schoendoerffer would always be something of an outsider in the world of French cinema.
There was one possibility left: the army. Encouraged by a newspaper article about official filmmakers covering France’s campaign to hang on to its empire in Indochina — and undaunted by the high mortality rates — he joined up in 1951. After a period of training he was sent out to Cambodia to film military operations in 1952. There he befriended the photographer Jean Péraud, who would be his close companion and guide throughout these intense years.
In 1954 he received a wire from Péraud at Dien Bien Phu, telling him to come as soon as he could. Schoendoerffer hurried out to witness what would prove the last stand of the French regime. Parachuted in during the 57-day siege, he kept on filming until the French positions were overrun, then destroyed all but six canisters of film, which he hid for later retrieval. They are thought to have fallen into the hands of a Soviet cameraman working alongside the Vietnamese forces. Schoendoerffer was taken prisoner and beaten, enduring four months of hardship with untended wounds, until his release could be negotiated. (Péraud, who had escaped into the jungle, was never heard of again.) Back in civilian life, Schoendoerffer became a journalist, first covering cinema and then moving on to the more violent events of Morocco and, above all, Algeria, where France was slowly sliding into its most traumatic colonial war of all. But he still burned to make films. Not long after his liberation, he had met his literary hero, Joseph Kessel, on an assignment to photograph the writer in Hong Kong: the setting, naturally, was an opium den. The upshot of which was a first documentary, based on Kessel’s book about the Afghan game of Buzkashi, La Passe du diable.
As important as the film was its producer, Georges de Beauregard, the future impresario of the Nouvelle Vague who would soon be giving Jean-Luc Godard his big break. Beauregard enabled him to make two more literary adaptations, both of stories by Pierre Loti and, undeterred by their lack of success, encouraged the budding director to adapt a story he had just written, La 317è section, for precisely that purpose. It recounts the experience of a group of local soldiers stationed on the border with Laos, led by a callow young officer and an experienced adjutant. They are ordered to double back 100 miles to the south to the nearest French outpost, just as the Viet Minh are closing in on the French Army at Dien Bien Phu. Their trek becomes a journey of self-discovery, an ordeal in which ideological and political causes are all but absent, the enemy all but invisible. This was war as an existential experience, its drama intensely human.
Much of the film’s authenticity and intensity comes from the way it was made. As Schoendoerffer recalled: “I made everyone live like soldiers. You cannot make a war film if you are comfortable. Every morning we got up at 5 o’clock and struck out into the jungle. An aeroplane came with supplies once a week. The film was sent to Paris the same way, and they got back to us by telegraph: “Good” or “No good”. La 317è section won the award for best screenplay at Cannes in 1965. It has stood as a classic ever since.
Schoendoerffer’s own career continued to be defined by the war. After a relatively unsuccessful stab at a heist movie, Objectif, 500 Millions, in 1966, he turned his attention to American soldiers in Vietnam, taking much the same approach as for their French predecessors. The result, The Anderson Platoon, won him the Oscar for best documentary in 1967. Two novels followed, L’Adieu du Roi (1969), set in Borneo during the Second World War, and Le Crabe tambour (1977), which tied together three key experiences: Indochina, Algeria and the sea. Both won important French literary prizes (the Prix Interallié and Prix de l’Académie Française, respectively), which was rare indeed for a film director, and both made it onto the screen: the first in an adaptation by John Milius (Farewell to the King, 1989), the second directed by Schoendoerffer himself (1976).
In 1994 he returned to Vietnam, this time to film the decisive battle itself in Dien Bien Phu (1994). While this account of a siege is on a larger scale, the emphasis is once again on confinement and isolation. Schoendoerffer’s heroes are men cut off and at the mercy of hazy forces but also their own inner demons. He was a director and writer whose exploration of dramatic historical events was always infused with a sense of melancholy and loss, and who brought to them a sense of a “mission ... to bear witness”.
He is survived by his wife, Patricia, whom he married in 1958, and by two sons and a daughter.
Pierre Schoendoerffer, film director, was born on May 5, 1928. He died on March 14, 2012, aged 83
Lieutenant-Commander Michael Wallrock
Морской офицер, служивший на эсминце в Средиземном море и награждённый за действия во время Нормандской десантной операции
Wartime destroyer officer who survived being torpedoed and bombed in the Mediterranean and was decorated for his actions in the Normandy landings
In a career in the Royal Naval Reserve which was nothing if not perilous, Michael Wallrock took part in many of the most famous actions of the Second World War and was sunk three times.
In 1937 he enrolled in the Thames Nautical Training College, the square-rigged HMS Worcester, where his athletic and leadership qualities earned him the post of Chief Cadet Captain and places in the boxing, rugby and cricket teams.
At the outbreak of war he was a cadet in the four-masted barque Abraham Rydberg which landed him at Barbados to return home and join the destroyer Jackal, one of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten’s 5th Flotilla. Jackal was employed in convoy protection until November 28 when, with others of the flotilla, she fought German destroyers making a tip-and-run raid in the Channel. Javelin, with Mountbatten on board, was torpedoed but survived an engagement for which Mountbatten was criticised for impetuosity but which persuaded the German naval staff that destroyer actions in the Channel were not worth the risk.
At the end of April 1941 the flotilla, now six strong, arrived at Malta to attack enemy supply convoys. On May 2, the Jersey was mined on entry to Valletta, split in two and sank. Using Jackal’s whaler, Wallrock picked up many of her oil-soaked survivors.
After escorting the vital “Tiger” convoy with tanks for the Eighth Army to Alexandria and bombarding Benghazi, the flotilla took part in the campaigns to prevent Crete falling into German hands and the subsequent evacuation, both operations costly in ships and lives, but which rescued more than 16,000 troops. On May 23 they were heavily attacked by Stuka dive- bombers from the efficient Fliegerkorps X and Mountbatten’s ship the Kelly was sunk with the Kashmir. At the end of May, Wallrock took ship’s boats ashore to Sphakia and rescued nearly 700 soldiers.
Thereafter, for the remainder of 1941 Jackal fought against Vichy French naval forces off Lebanon, escorted or provided diversions for three Malta convoys and in November was torpedoed by an aircraft off Derna in North Africa. She emerged from repairs in Alexandria in May 1942 and, during operations to interdict Axis convoys to Benghazi, was bombed and set on fire. The destroyers Kipling and Lively were sunk. Jervis took Jackal in tow, but the fires proved uncontrollable so Jervis sank her with a torpedo and made Alexandria crammed with the survivors of three ships.
Wallrock was appointed to the Hunt-class destroyer Eridge as navigator and in July, with four other Hunts, bombarded Mersa Matruh and sank an ammunition ship. On August 29, while bombarding an airfield, Eridge was torpedoed by an E-boat. Wallrock was in the charthouse laying off the course for home when there was a large explosion. “I thought she was going to roll right over but she stalled at about 20 degrees list,” he said. Without electrical power Eridge was towed to Alexandria by the Aldenham — “supremely unpleasant, what with the shore batteries and the Junkers”.
Eridge was assessed as beyond worthwhile repair. Wallrock was lucky to survive his next operation, the misconceived and disastrous assault on Tobruk in September 1942 which, as a result of bad planning and loss of surprise, resulted in the sinking of the cruiser Coventry, the destroyers Sikh and Zulu, six MTBs and MLs and the loss of about 700 soldiers, Royal Marines and sailors. Wallrock had his doubts on his first sight of MTB309: “To get to Tobruk we needed a deck full of 100 octane petrol cans stowed between the torpedo tubes.”
A brief period in the Clydebank-built drifter Romeo — “a rotten little coal-burner” — was followed by appointment as navigator to the destroyer Pakenham in February 1943, proceeding to Malta for escort duties. On April 16, in company with Paladin, she attacked a convoy southwest of Marsala protected by four Italian torpedo boats, one of which she sank. But Pakenham was damaged and taken in tow. The tow was abandoned because of the threat of air attack and Pakenham was sunk by torpedo from Paladin.
Wallrock returned home aboard the destroyer Javelin and received yet another destroyer appointment — this time to the newly built Hunt-class Talybont in July 1943. Operating in the Channel, Talybont fought several engagements of varying success against German torpedo boats and survived a collision with a merchant ship until, in June 1944, she supported the Normandy invasion, being assigned to the American sector off Omaha Beach. With the USS Saterlee, Talybont provided gunfire support to the celebrated assault up the cliff face of Pointe du Hoc by 2nd Rangers, who found that the emplaced guns had been removed days before. They were found elsewhere and destroyed.
Talybont continued to support the invasion, suffering slight damage from shore batteries off Cherbourg in late June and taking part in a successful battle off Le Havre in July. Wallrock was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French and was twice mentioned in dispatches for these actions.
After a period of shore duty, he was assigned to the “lease-lend” Captain-class diesel-electric frigate Rupert in which he recalled accepting the surrender of six U-boats in Loch Eriboll on the Scottish northeast coast.
Wallrock became engaged to Joan Younger on VE-Day and they were married on VJ-Day. Rupert was returned to the United States in March 1946, and her crew repatriated in the Queen Mary.
After qualifying as a square-rig master mariner in late 1947, Wallrock helped to run the Outward Bound Sea School, operating the Prince Louis sail training vessel. He then ran a boatyard on the Stour near Christchurch, Hampshire, for ten years. Recovering from a period of ill-health, he excavated and set up the Little Avon Marina, later running charters out of Antibes on the Côte d’Azur in his yacht Cardigrae VI. In later life, while living in Beaulieu, Hampshire, he took up tennis, competing at veterans’ national level into his eighties.
He is survived by his wife Joan and their five children.
Lieutenant-Commander Michael Wallrock, master mariner and destroyer officer, was born on July 15, 1921. He died on February 17, 2012, aged 90
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
