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Movie `Saigon Commandos` - a classic work that sets viewership records 1
(Dan Tri) – `Saigon Commandos` is a film associated with the name of director Long Van.
Director Long Van passed away on the morning of December 24 in Hanoi.
Director Long Van is 87 years old (Photo: Document).
This is the first and only film in Vietnamese cinema that recreates the outstanding events of the Saigon commandos during the Vietnam War.
According to the late General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, angels may not have achieved glorious victories like commando soldiers, and at the same time, naming them Saigon Commandos can truly portray the reality of what happened.
The film consists of 4 episodes: Rendezvous, Silence, Storm and Return Your Name written by Le Phuong and Nguyen Thanh, filmed in 1982 and lasted about 4 years.
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`Saigon Commandos` written by Le Phuong and Nguyen Thanh and directed by Long Van is a classic work of Vietnamese revolutionary cinema (Photo: Documents).
Saigon Commandos depicts battle scenes with guns, exploding mines, smoke, fire and casualties, but is mainly still a tense battle of wits between soldiers operating secretly inside the enemy.
That is Tu Chung – Commander of the Saigon Special Forces – and his teammate Ngoc Mai who have to pretend to be a rich capitalist couple, encountering enemies every day.
Meanwhile, another female commando soldier – Huyen Trang – had to disguise herself as a nun to hide from the enemy.
Besides, there are also other brave and clever comrades such as Nam Hoa, Sau Tam, the mother in the back, the baby selling newspapers as a liaison… Each person has a different position and role, together
Even though there are only 4 episodes, the work has many scenes that leave a deep impression.
The scene where Sau Tam (Thuong Tin) jumps off the bridge, with the enemy shooting at him, was confirmed by director Long Van as a very dangerous scene because the river was lined with explosives. Every time he jumped down, someone pulled the rope to make the explosives splash into the water.
Director Long Van also had to `break his tongue` for his only daughter, child actress Van Dung, to accept the role of a newspaper seller.
Sharing about this impressive scene, director Long Van once said that when filming the scene where Van Dung was tortured by the enemy by dropping her into a barrel of poisonous snakes, she only asked him how to make the snake stop sticking out her tongue, in
According to director Long Van during his lifetime, he rented about 20 snakes from a restaurant that specialized in selling snakes, and also hired store employees to act as torturers to control the snakes safely.
He hid the fact that these snakes had all their teeth extracted and their venom removed, and their tails were tied tightly so that Van Dung would be horrified and cry in order to get the most realistic footage.
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Child actress Van Dung plays the role of a newspaper vendor in the scene where she is tortured by the enemy, making viewers sad and haunted (Photo: Screenshot cut from the movie).
As a film set in a war context, Saigon Rangers still does not lack poetry that is gently and skillfully conveyed through the love between the army and people, the love of teammates and even the romantic love of the special forces soldiers.
Interspersed between the heated confrontations are emotional but also tearful love stories of couples: Tu Chung – Huyen Trang, Ngoc Mai – Tu Chung, Sau Tam – Ngoc Lan…
It is these points that helped the film reach people’s hearts more easily than other films simply about war at that time.
The greatest success of the movie Saigon Rangers is not only the glorious victories of the soldiers of the Vietnam People’s Army, but also capturing the `bridge of people’s hearts` from wartime to peacetime.
Special forces soldiers not only fight for the common mission of the country but are also willing to sacrifice personal feelings for the destiny of the country and the nation.
As a famous and talented director with many successful film works, director Long Van still emphasized during his lifetime that Saigon Rangers was always one of the most special `spiritual children` in the world.
Sharing with Dan Tri reporter, screenwriter Trinh Thanh Nha said that the script of the movie `Saigon Rangers` was written intermittently.
This is possible thanks to screenwriter Le Phuong and director Long Van together carefully reviewing each situation and each previous scene to come to the optimal solution.
`I still remember, the two of you told the story of how to make actor Thuong Tin leave the movie at the end of episode 2 because at that time Thuong Tin’s character was making a strong impression. For this character to disappear from the story, it needed a love story.
To create this situation, the two men went back and forth over the details, re-installed the filmed segments, and led the story to that sacrifice so logically that many viewers cried out of pity for the character.
The female screenwriter also said that such a case of script creation is quite rare because it can lead to patchwork and forcedness.
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Scene from the movie `Saigon Rangers` (Photo: Documents).
Talking about the movie Saigon Rangers becoming a box office phenomenon, setting viewership records at that time, screenwriter Trinh Thanh Nha shared that she had witnessed audiences lining up to buy tickets to see the movie in Hanoi.
In some places, the audience was so jostling to buy tickets that the walls collapsed like at the Co Nhue theater (Hanoi), creating a scene never before seen in the history of Vietnamese revolutionary cinema.
According to her, in terms of film quality, at that time as well as later, the precision in staging, acting… was difficult for any film to achieve.
`The great battle scenes at the US Embassy, or the barricades in front of the Dong A paint company, are very real. The same is true of the American raid on Cu Chi. The character portraits are carefully prepared, the actors are selected.
The correct choice of actors for the roles of Tu Chung, Ngoc Mai, or nun Huyen Trang all helped the film’s cast leave their mark in the hearts of the audience.