With special guest Peter Davis
Hosted by Thom Powers

For ten years, the American public was bombarded daily with body counts from Vietnam. The television news programs covered the war in living and dying color. Some were occasionally reassured by what they saw, others were horrified, almost everyone was confused. Many were to call the Vietnam War the greatest tragedy to befall the United States since the Civil War. In 1972, director Peter Davis and his crew filmed in battle-torn, war-weary Vietnam before the United States’ troops pulled out. Hearts and Minds is a film about why the United States went to Vietnam, what we did there and what doing it did to us.

Hearts and Minds includes a cast of leaders and followers, victims and perpetrators, the strong and the weak. There are exclusive
interviews with General William Westmoreland, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, Senator William Fulbright, and former Presidential Advisor Walt Rostow. Daniel Ellsberg (The Pentagon Papers) gives his unique perspective on the war. Director Peter Davis would say, “Hearts and Minds is a movie about the war. It’s neither pro nor anti-American: it is an attempt to understand what we have done and what we have become. It is more psychological than political, and it is not a chronology of the war so much as a study of people’s feelings.”

A Howard Zuker/Henry Jaglom Rainbow Pictures Presentation. 1974. 112 minutes.

Directed by Peter Davis. Produced by Bert Schneider and Peter Davis. Photographed by Richard Pearce.

Academy Award: Best Documentary Feature. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.