Dean Durkin 

12.20.22

The Vietnamese at War in Chi Tu Hau 

Pham Ky Nam’s Chi Tu Hau (1962) is a North Vietnamese film that was released during the Second Indochinese War. It tells the story of a southern peasant mother who joins the Viet Minh to rescue her daughter after her family is murdered. The film demonstrates the revolution that instigated the divide between North and South Vietnam through displaying the impact of French foreign rule over the rural peasantry. Nam’s film retold the story of a peasant within the historical frame of the first Indochinese war that was used as propaganda to enhance resistance against foreign intervention in Vietnam. This paper will investigate how Nam uses Vietnamese history to display revolutionary principles in envisioning which factors contributed to the separation between North and South Vietnam.  The film displays the French imperial presence as having created a class of Vietnamese soldiers that betray and abuse the peasantry. The conditions Hau experiences as a result of this rule involve the violent deaths of her family, and the kidnapping of her daughter. These elements motivate her to become involved in the revolution against the French. Rather than abandon her countrymen, Hau will become the embodied struggle that the Viet Minh fight for, while her daughter is represented as the future of Vietnam. Hau’s identity as the ideal southerner woman is a fetishization for the expected role of Southern people. By propelling Hau from a domestic midwife into a revolutionary, Chi Tu Hau instills in its audiences that the revolutionary cause must involve the breaking of domestic roles in the family, and the participation of a unified peasant class. 

The violence of the French presence is shown with a deadly assault on Hau’s village six minutes into the film. Without any context nor explained reason for their attack, enemy soldiers straightforwardly appear and begin to mortar the village and gun down its unarmed inhabitants. The enemy is not confined to a specific race nor a people, but is displayed as a force of evil that is influenced from the foreign presence. French soldiers laugh as they shoot down a fleeing villager on crutches, while Vietnamese soldiers discuss raping the village girls with their French commander. At times, the violence is so extreme that it borders what is plausible to human nature. Yet Goscha’s interviews with the peasantry whom were under French rule strengthens the film’s depiction. In the borderlands where French rule was weakest, horrible civilian massacres, including torture, rape, and summary executions were carried out in entire villages that wiped out hundreds of human beings within minutes when French patrols moved in. Villagers lived in a state of perpetual instability since there were some people who worked as spies for the Viet Minh or French authorities within these villages. With this information, the film’s depiction of the village as a battlefield visualizes to its audiences the horrors that the peasantry experienced. After the French authorities secure the village, and eleven minutes after the film’s start, Hau is photographed and then raped by a French officer. The violent events that permeate this attack on the village quickly introduce viewers to an inhumane enemy force that is influenced and encouraged by the presence of the French officers. This devastating sequence is presented as a violation of the fundamental human right to peaceful coexistence between the peasantry and its rulers. The attack on her village destabilizes Hau’s mental state, yet becomes an origin that ultimately propels her alliance with the Viet Minh to become a part of their revolutionary fight. Chi Tu Hau makes it clear to audiences that the Vietnamese peasantry wasn’t instinctively against the French. Rather it was the violence of these inhumane attacks that drove the foundation for armed resistance.

While the attack on her village makes Hau conscious of an enemy, the deaths of her husband and father, and the kidnapping of her daughter drive her to join the revolutionary cause. These key moments are enhanced in two scenes in which Hau interacts with the ocean, where her transformative decisions to not abandon her child, and develop a revolutionary mind state, will influence her character motivation. Khoa, her husband’s, naturalist death within the open field of battle both agrees and disagrees with Grossheim’s account of anti-revisionist policy presenting “sanitized versions of the war as a sacred and heroic struggle for the reunification of the country.” The husband’s death plays out with being shot right as he tosses a grenade, and collapses onto the ground as Hau’s scarf falls on a tree. His sacrifice is equally in vain as it is glorious, since it coincides with the accounts of the transition from guerrilla tactics to set piece battle in the 1950’s. Young peasant boys were drafted and sent directly into the line of fire without proper training from the Viet Minh. Pham Ky Nam’s display of such a realistic yet disturbing death neither promotes the war effort nor dismisses it. This death suggests that the physical fight of the war cannot be successful without the presence of a revolutionary ideal, which will be Hau’s advantage and reason for her victory. Following her husband’s death, Hau will develop a matured revolutionary attitude in a scene where she stares into the ocean. 

Hau’s scenes at the sea are presented as reflections of her emotional states following the traumatic events unfolded by the enemy. Her first interaction unfolds after she is raped by the French officer, while the second instance immediately follows her husband’s death. Both scenes feature dramatic and powerful orchestral music and originate from a foreign presence being responsible for this depression. After she is raped, Hau runs into the ocean, away from the terror and as if she were trying to wash herself of this sin. However, she freezes once hearing the cries of her child as her father rushes towards her with Thuy in his arms. Hau returns to the shore to breastfeed the child and calm her. Her interaction with this ocean suggests the inability to leave Vietnam, due to her commitment to the child. She will not become a fleeing refugee, but bear a responsibility for Thuy that will extend to her countrymen. In the scene following her husband’s death, the ocean is idealized and observed in a vastly different manner. Starting with a close up shot, Hau stares at the ocean as if it were responsible for her husband’s death. This manipulation in representing from the ocean as an escape to an enemy coincides with Hau’s development to into a revolutionary. This is contrasted when she saw off her husband’s leave to war with her daughter when he was sent up river. While the scenes with the ocean conclude that Hau will not abandon her home, the river symbolizes deepening her conquest into the heart of the revolution. Following the death of her father, Hau will be forced to abandon her village and her child to join the Viet Minh. 

Hau’s father is violently massacred when Vietnamese units under French authority burn her house down, suspecting Hau of becoming a revolutionist. As she reaches the remains of her home, an internal monologue plays: “After my father's death, I decided to hand my daughter to someone else for my operation. Away from her means away from my biggest source of encouragement. But I have no choice when I realized that I needed to fight in every battle. I have to light up the fire that will consume all the [enemy] outposts and roots of all suffering on my countrymen.” Her father’s death is shown in an exceedingly gruesome manner, as he is shot multiple times in the chest while attempting to put the fire in his home. His ineffectiveness to put up a fight against the enemy more generally mirrors the older generations’ failure to counter the French presence in Vietnam. It is equally a display of the perpetual horrors that foreigners brought upon the peasant population.

While the attack on her village and the death of her husband and father propel Hau to develop a revolutionary attitude, her daughter Thuy is a physical embodiment of the future of Vietnam, which in turn presents Hau as the revolutionary mother that fights for the realization of this future. Firstly I’ll describe the scenes that support Hau as a good samaritan devoted to her child, and secondly, I’ll seek to understand why this interpretation is represented in the revolutionary character of a woman rather than a male protagonist. In the first scene of the film Hau is shown within the grounds of a hospital after going through a surgical operation. She exclaims her excitement to see Thuy who will be visiting in the upcoming weekend from the northern city of Haiphong. Audiences are quickly introduced to Hau’s goodwill and support for her neighbors when she is shown to be a midwife who aids local mothers give birth. This factor plays into her ability to gain public trust, while being recognized as a notable figure in the countryside. Her significant standing plays into her advantage in bypassing an enemy outpost once she becomes acquainted with the Viet Minh later in the film. When she witnesses her own daughter’s kidnapping, Hau chooses to regroup with the Viet Minh to launch a coordinated attack on the military base where they’re interrogating her daughter in a cell. Hau's devotion to her child and her prioritization of the revolutionary cause is exhibited when she dismisses Viet Minh soldier Duan’s offer to become invested in a new relationship. This shows that she is not joining this revolution in desperation or submission to find the help of a fellow countryman, but that she is truly invested in what she is fighting for. 

Is Hau’s storyline of a mother who takes up the cause for revolution a realistic or exaggerated aspect within Vietnamese history? Karen Turner’s paper on Vietnam as a Women’s War tells the decade long transformation of women fighting with the Viet Minh and the DRV throughout the Indochinese Wars. In a certain portion, she informs that the violent experiences in rural villages encouraged Vietnamese women to join the war effort. Many young women who would’ve in “normal times dreamed of a husband and children in the near future figured that they had to leave home to save home.” The war revolutionized the role of women as their domestic life was annihilated to the point of no return. A veteran woman recalled in an interview that “I was born in Thai Binh Province. My family were farmers. In 1948 my father was killed in the French War. My mother was with child when he died and she raised us four children alone. In 1968, I volunteered to be a soldier, and I spent five years in the field during the most terrible time of the war. Why? Four people in my family died when the Americans bombed the Hanoi suburbs. I was angry and I believed that what men could do, I could do too.’” As if Chi Tu Hau’s storyline were inspired from this very account, the motivation for this woman’s recruitment into the war hauntingly shadows Hau’s escalation to join the Viet Minh. As Turner notes, women played a significant part in supplying and coordinating the Ho Chi Minh trail throughout the Second Indochina War. This factor proves Pham Ky Nam’s ability to reach a wide range of audiences through recounting Vietnam’s history against an imperial oppression.

At the battle’s end Hau runs through the breached French base screaming her daughter’s name, until she is shot by a sniper from a Vietnamese officer. With this action, the audience is never able to see the reunion of mother and daughter, while the root of evil is concluded to survive through the traitorous Vietnamese. Hau remarkably survives her wound when the film returns to the present narrative at the outdoor grounds of the hospital. The return to the film’s opening presents a feeling of familiarity, while simultaneously leaving the audience to imagine for themselves whether this pair will ever be reunited. This conclusion supports the assertion that Hau, the embodiment of the revolution, has not yet met her daughter who is the future of Vietnam. The film’s resolution concludes that the revolution is an ongoing conflict that cannot cease until the South is reunited with the North. 

While the paragraph above demonstrates how Chi Tu Hau appealed to audiences on a socially inclusive level, the political standing of this film is a point worth discussing. This movie never mentions communism directly, nor does it confront notions of Northern nationality, or an allegiance to any political party. Rather, the Viet Minh and French outposts are presented as militarized forces fighting one another within the outlook of a generalized hero and villain subplot. Due to the absence of straightforward political narratives, Pham Ky Nam’s film is an outlier compared to straightforward sources of propaganda. Grossheim’s article discusses how revisionism against counter-revolutionary principles impacted the DRV’s foreign relations after the events of the Sino Soviet split in 1960. In order to maintain public support in the war against the RVN, the DRV’s anti-revisionist reformation campaign redefined what media held counter-revolutionary narratives, and which did not. Any literature, film, or content accused of neglecting revolutionary principles were outright banned for distribution and consumption within the DRV. This wave of revisionism was not only confined to foreign media but also incorporated any Northern publications that were determined unpresentable. In an example from a film released in the same year titled The Passerine Bird (1962), Grossheim recounts how the anti-revisionist faction in Hanoi heavily criticized the film's concern with the death of its protagonist Nga at the hands of French soldiers. He notes that anti-revisionist policy concluded that enemies could die but not “us”, being any depictions related to the anti-imperialist cause, since films were required to transpose faith and optimism in victory. Under this context, it’s important to examine how Chi Tu Hau spreads its optimism with such violent content matter. Dissecting this answer will show us that Grossheim’s statement of this “us” concerns any Vietnamese fighting against foreign oppressors.

There are two main factors that distinguish Grossheim's example of The Passerine Bird from Pham Ky Nam’s Chi Tu Hau: the main character does not die, and there is a different family figure who is involved with the Viet Minh. Unlike Nga’s death, Hau survives her wounds at the film’s end, as she is representative of the soul of the revolution. If her character had died, then the revolutionary cause and its future would’ve died with her, since there would be no possibility in reconnecting with her daughter. In The Passerine Bird, the female protagonist’s father is already actively involved in transporting revolutionary cadres across distances, so the French officials already have their suspicions placed on this family. As previously discussed, French officials attacked Vietnamese villages with the objective of rooting out traitorous spies, which is basically what Nga’s family is. This presentation denotes the family as untrustworthy, even if they are helping the revolutionary cause. Chi Tu Hau presents Hau’s family as innocent bystanders and peaceful peasants whom are imposed with the harsh terror of the French. Whether or not I wasn’t able to whether this film was approved or disproved in the anti-revisionist moment is not of concern, although it is worth writing another paper on. These elements of presenting the peasantry population distinguish the two messages of the two film’s as separate, and prove that while historical context was correctly presented, the setup of its characters was of primary concern. To connect with a peasant class, they must be represented in a revolutionary light that does not invalidate their cause. Chi Tu Hau’s atmosphere doesn’t entirely satisfy its audience for the purpose of instigating a revolutionary attitude. The main character is still taken prisoner, her entire family and village are attacked, and her child is living in another part of the country. Nam’s movie incorporates humanist elements of death, destruction, and vulnerability while refraining from depicting representations of mistrustful characters in order to present a piece of work that presents the peasantry as the main force of the revolution. 

Chi Tu Hau’s use of a humble woman of the South as its main character suggests ideological narratives that relate to the present context of its release in 1962. It both suggests that the peasantry in the Southern state of the RVN are held captive and forced to horrific subjugation such as the French enacted, or their chance to become a revolutionist like Hau was ignored. The latter statement implies the remnants of an evilness that was encouraged by the French imperial presence in Vietnam is alive in the South, and that it must be defeated to unite Vietnam like Hau and Thuy should be reunited. Hau is propelled to defeat this enemy after the events of her rape, the death of her husband, the death of her father, and the kidnapping of her daughter. Each of these horrific acts contains a dialect between the state of peasantry life to the motivation for revolution in the public consciousness, as they are all things that could happen to anyone. Hau was a part of an innocent and uncommitted family that was violently attacked for no reason other than a massacre. These horrific series of events in Vietnamese history made Hau conscious of the subjugation to foreign influence, and her quest to become a part of the cause to fight against it. Chi Tu Hau appeals to the peasantry population by straying from exhibiting nationalist and political branding through ingeniously exhibiting humanist elements that relate to the peasant class. This is supported through the evolution of a woman from the role of a midwife to a revolutionary figure. Through retelling the struggles of a fictional character within historical settings, Pham Ky Nam presents a film about the ongoing Vietnamese revolution against foreign oppression and the unification of Vietnam.