Blaylock, Sara. “Bringing the war home to the United States and East Germany: In the Year of the Pig and Pilots in Pajamas.” Cinema Journal, vol. 56, no. 4, 2017, pp. 26-50. Web.
De Antonio’s film continues to be an important piece based on Blaylock’s article. The author shows that it is crucial within the comparatively small body of American films that discussed and refuted the Vietnam War in the years prior to the 1968 release of In the Year of the Pig (Blaylock 28). The independently produced film creates a historical perspective on Vietnam history that challenges the popular media’s conventional account by fusing original interviews with academic and military specialists with modern and recorded footage from Europe and North America (Blaylock 28). According to de Antonio, television had separated the American people from the war, making it into a painful spectacle that could be watched like a television show (Blaylock 28). Therefore, the author reflects on the movie’s role in the media and culture.
Browder, Laura. “The Meaning of the Soldier: In the Year of the Pig and Hearts and Minds.” A Companion to the War Film, 2016, pp. 356-370. Web.
Unlike other writers, Laura Browder concentrates on the meaning of the film and its external forces. According to the author, Brechtian agitprop is expertly demonstrated in the film (Browder 2). Furthermore, despite being released in the late 1960s, In the Year of the Pig is considered to be a classic left-wing documentary, with origins in early Soviet cinema and a continuing newspaper custom that was established there in the 1920s and later enhanced in the 1930s (Browder 2). Thus, In the Year of the Pig adopts a Brechtian perspective on history while simultaneously connecting to the common front ideology that shaped de Antonio’s decision to join the Communist Party USA in the late 1930s (Browder 2). Thus, the article stresses the communist influences in the era and movie.
Stork, Benedict Hayden. “A Shared Pain: Archival Footage and History as Immanent Cause in In the Year of the Pig.” Synoptique, vol. 4, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1-27. Web.
The author discusses the film and how an image of a war memorial opens the motion picture, which is quite symbolic. The whole rightmost portion of the screen is taken up by a black-and-white picture of a statue honoring a fallen Union soldier at Gettysburg (Stork 8). The film’s opening shots proclaim that In the Year of the Pig is a historical drama, with its efforts to intervene in the Vietnam War still in progress (Stork 8). The film emphasizes the intricacy of the course of time and the significance of the past through its diverse display of these military monuments (Stork 8). Consequently, the film is seen as surpassing the notion of history as either a straightforward account of historical events or an explicit depiction of advancement.