IN THE YEAR OF THE PIG

The director of Point of Order (about the TV hearings of Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee) and Rush to Judgment (based on Mark Lane's post -: mortem of the Kennedy assassination) has now made a documentary about the war in Vietnam...

A few paragraphs of description cannot do justice to In the Year of tire Pig. It all comes out sounding too prosaic, too obviously propagandistic. Propaganda it is - in the best sense of the word. It is a film with a point of view based on an uncompromising view of historical reality. But prosaic it's not. - Irwin Silber in the Guardian

Much of the film's footage was shot by and for American TV; most of it. of course, was never shown. What counters the compassionate, sweet - guy, peace -oriented GI image is carefully screened out and filed away in station and network libraries, there to collect dust -until turned up by a de Antonio. - Commonweal

It is. to be sure, hardly objective. Its quotes from proponents of the war in Vietnam make them seem ludicrous. But youths now approaching draft age were only toddlers when we began to get into that morass. The Elm does tell how it all happened. - Boston Globe

De Antonio does more than stir our wrath or pity in the cause of a quick, alleviating cheque to Oxfam or whatever. He irritates the viewer into thought. - John Coleman in tire New Statesman

Audiences sit in helpless frustration watching scenes of historical horror... The result is a slanted but devastating account of the spiraling American involvement in South-East Asia .... A powerful if over-simplified introduction to the political and moral morass of Vietnam, In the Year of the Pig is ultimately confounded by its own sense of outrage.- Time

Silver Dove. Leipzig.