The 317th Platoon

"The 317th Platoon" (La 317ème Section) — watch online this 1965 French war drama directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer. May 1954, eight days before the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The 317th — four French officers and forty-one Laotian soldiers — are ordered to abandon their outpost and cover 150 kilometers of Laotian jungle on foot.

Two men lead the march. Sous-lieutenant Torrens came straight from military academy: idealistic, by-the-book, not yet broken. Adjutant Willsdorf fought in the Wehrmacht in the last war and stopped trusting doctrine somewhere in the mud. The jungle, the rain, and the Viet Minh ambushes grind at both of them differently, and their exchanges in the downpour carry more weight than any tactical decision. Jacques Perrin plays Torrens, Bruno Cremer plays Willsdorf.

Schoendoerffer served in Indochina himself and was taken prisoner at Dien Bien Phu — the film is not reconstruction, it is recollection. The screenplay took the prize at Cannes in 1965. A war film that treats defeat as fact, not as wound. Stream "The 317th Platoon" (1965) on iFILM.