The world wasn't ready for Francine Parker's documentary when it debuted in 1972. After all, the war in Vietnam was still raging, and most Americans had no idea how disastrously things were going. Later antiwar films, like 1974's Hearts and Minds, would meet with a more receptive audience, while distributor American International Pictures withdrew F.T.A. from theaters after only a week.
To add insult to injury, they destroyed the prints. It seems likely that the title, on top of Jane Fonda's pilloried trip to Hanoi, contributed to the problem, especially once advertisers, distributors, and exhibitors figured out what the "F" stood for, though participants claimed it stood for "Fight" as in "Fight the War."
For the next 42 years, the film became nearly impossible to see, despite the participation of Fonda and Donald Sutherland, though their names also probably inspired this welcome restoration. The actors, who bonded while working on Alan J. Pakula's paranoid thriller Klute, decided to channel their anger at American intervention in the Asian Pacific into a series of variety shows intended for the military's growing antiwar contingent. They solicited financial and creative support from a broad coalition of entertainment figures, including Elliot Gould, Howard Hesseman, and Peter Boyle. Parker captures 1971 shows Fonda and Sutherland presented just outside staging areas in Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan.
Believing that the American shows had been too white and too male, Fonda helped to put together a troupe, including Black musicians Len Chandler and Rita Martinson, that looked more like the members of their audiences. Holly Near, then a virtually unknown singer, also signed on, impressing Fonda with her voice and presence (as singers, Fonda and Sutherland don't hit the same heights, though they're fine in context).
Shooting in grainy 35mm, Parker combines skits, musical performances, readings and speeches, and interviews with servicemen and women. For material, they secured the services of famed writers, like Jules Pfeiffer (Carnal Knowledge), though the satirical skits don't work quite as well as the stirring songs and candid interviews. For most of the shows, service members laugh, applaud, and sing along to lyrics, like "Soldier, we love you" and "We will not bow down to genocide," though a show in Japan threatens to go off the rails when pro-war hecklers raise a ruckus. Sutherland persuades the audience to ask them to leave, and they finally slink away, realizing that they're vastly outnumbered.
Context is all-important for a project of this nature, and Kino Lorber has included an introduction and an interview with Fonda, in addition to David Zeiger's excellent 2005 documentary, Sir! No Sir!, which provides a fuller picture of antiwar sentiment among military members through archival footage and present-day interviews with men and women who refused to fight and paid the price. Despite courts-martial and prison terms, not one of them regrets their actions. Fonda's son, Troy Garity, who played a service member in 2003's award-winning Soldier's Girl, provides the narration. The two films together make for the perfect match. Recommended. Aud: C, P.