ABSTRACT
In 1966, as B-52s began bombing North Vietnam, American opinion was growing more polarized. The countercultural themes and unconventional cinematic approaches of New Hollywood filmmaking were still a year away, but in the treatment of colonial themes, that year marked an important shift in Hollywood. The San Diego Union said the film “raises questions about the wisdom of foreign intervention in underdeveloped countries,” and the Hollywood Reporter considered it “pertinent and meaningful for Vietnam or the Congo or Cuba.” Standing somewhere between the colonialist Khartoum and clearly anti-colonialist films released later in 1966 was Lost Command, from Columbia Pictures. Among those who understood the film, Michel Perez of Combat found it too anti-colonialist and condemned the “moral of abandonment it slyly preaches. The film cast a harsh light on an important chapter in the country’s colonial history, and its production by a major Hollywood studio indicated fundamental changes taking place in American thinking.
