Title: REDS

Date: 6/15/1995; Publication: Magill's Survey of Cinema;

Magill's Survey of Cinema

06-15-1995

REDS

Abstract:
Warren Beatty functioned as writer, director, and producer in this ambitious biography of Socialist Jack Reed (Warren Beatty). Beatty combines Reed's love affair with revolutionary feminist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) and the growth of his political activism which ultimately led Reed to participate in the Russian Revolution. Interviews with thirty-two surviving "witnesses" -- actual associates and contemporaries of Reed -- are innovatively intercut with the drama.


Summary:
It became evident very early in its history that Warren Beatty's REDS, an ambitious and highly creative work based on the life of John Reed, would have some problems at the box office as well as with critics. Initial reviews drew comparisons with David Lean's DR. ZHIVAGO (1965) instead of Sergei Eisenstein's OCTOBER (1927), a seemingly more suitable choice. Comparisons with DR. ZHIVAGO immediately opened up the film to a wide range of criticisms. Diane Keaton's performance in a romantic role was judged greatly inferior to Julie Christie's. REDS was faulted for its lack of warm and sympathetic characters and an epic, sweeping musical score such as that of DR. ZHIVAGO. Finally and perhaps most damaging, critics charged that REDS's heavy political statements detracted from the effectiveness of the love story.

On the other hand, had it initially been measured, as Beatty would no doubt have preferred, against Eisenstein's OCTOBER (also based upon John Reed's book TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD), REDS would still have had serious problems. In this event, the love relationship that constitutes a significant emphasis of the film would be viewed as a serious distraction from the film's political concerns. Thus, while Beatty's film is an outstanding achievement, one which will undoubtedly become increasingly well-regarded in years to come, it is a film with an identity crisis -- one that attempts too many things and consequently spreads itself too thin.

REDS's complex screenplay, jointly written by Beatty and British screenwriter Trevor Griffiths, attempts to serve as a biography of the American journalist John Reed, whose book TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD was a powerful eyewitness account of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. According to one account (later disproved), Reed, after his death in 1920 at the age of thirty-three, became the only American to be buried in the Kremlin. He is now known to be only the first of several of his countrymen to achieve that distinction.

Reed's screen biography is a rather complex and ambitious juxtaposition of several different motifs. The film includes an extremely compressed history of the American radical left and its activities in the period 1915-1920, centering primarily on the activities of Big Bill Haywood, the American Socialist Party, and the ultimate birth of the fledgling Communist Party in the United States. Also included, to some degree, are the liberal intellectual gatherings of the era, emphasizing particularly the movements in Provincetown and Greenwich Village.

The love story, concentrating on Reed's stormy relationship with an aspiring feminist named Louise Bryant, is intercut with the political episodes and seemingly reaffirms the power of traditional human relationships to bind people together in spite of mutual flirtations with sexual freedom and the divergence of careers. Yet the most interesting structural device in the film is a series of interviews with thirty-two surviving "witnesses," actual associates and contemporaries of Reed. These aged witnesses, filmed against a stark black background, provide a remarkable contrast to the film's youthful revolutionaries as well as an uncanny sense of authenticity. It must be admitted, however, that the film is weakened by Beatty's unwillingness to identify these commentators, although older filmgoers will recognize among them the faces of Arthur Mayer, George Jessel, Hamilton Fish, Rebecca West, Roger Baldwin, Henry Miller, and Adela Rogers St. John.

While the recollections of these witnesses provide the framework for the episodes of this three-hour-and-fifteen-minute film, it is the powerful acting of Beatty as Reed and Keaton as Bryant that provides the degree of cohesion that the picture achieves. Still, over the relatively lengthy time span of the film the characters wear a little thin, and the viewer regrets that more time was not devoted to the interesting characterizations of Emma Goldman and Eugene O'Neill, portrayed by Maureen Stapleton and Jack Nicholson, respectively.

The "story" of the film concerns John Reed (Warren Beatty), a newspaper reporter from Portland, Oregon. Born into a wealthy family, Reed becomes increasingly radical as a result of his journalistic experiences. When a growing number of mainstream newspapers decline to print his graphic, firsthand reports of police brutality and labor injustices, he takes them to a smaller circulation left-wing magazine which provides a springboard for his involvement in radical politics. He is a willing recruit and, through a rapid series of events, winds up as both an eyewitness and a participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

When he subsequently returns to the United States he becomes involved in the political infighting characteristic of the American left of that period. This causes his earlier, almost blind idealism to ebb somewhat. When he again returns to the newly formed Soviet Union over the protests of his wife Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), he is further disillusioned to discover that a close-knit, dull bureaucracy has assumed dictatorial powers over the country. He realizes that although he is a member of the group called the Comintern, an international federation of Communist parties, his speeches are deliberately mistranslated to bring them totally in line with Marxist dogma. At this point, Reed finally perceives that he has not only been deceived but also that he is, in fact, trapped. On the whole, he has seen the achievement of the revolutionary dream to which he has devoted his life, yet it is nothing like what he envisioned it would be. He cannot find the strength to renounce it and thus render his life meaningless. His dilemma is resolved in his death from typhus at the age of thirty-three.

Reed's relationship with Louise Bryant is not as easy to summarize as are the political aspects of the film, largely because she is not an easy character to define. She comes into conflict with her husband over the amount of time he spends in political activities with ideological compatriots such as Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann), Floyd Dell (Max Wright), and others. At the same time, she also complains because these people do not take her seriously. She is presented in a more sympathetic light in the second half of the film, however, after Reed has been imprisoned in Finland. She secrets herself on a freighter leaving New York for Norway, survives a terrible storm, and finally treks painfully across the icy tundra to be with her man. The snowy scenes are reminiscent of DR. ZHIVAGO but they do not arise logically out of anything that happened in the initial segments of the film and thus form something of an artificial resolution to her conflicts with Reed.

The performances by the principals are more than competent, although Beatty himself probably has gone to the well once too often with the ingratiating, stammering little boy persona which was so much more effective in HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978). It is the acting of the supporting group that provides the core of strength in the film: Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill, Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman, novelist Jerzy Kosinski as Grigory Zinoviev, and Paul Sorvino as a remarkably restrained Louis Fraina. The strong performances of this group, especially Stapleton's Oscar-winning role, lent validity to Beatty's Academy Award for Best Director of 1981. He is an excellent actor's director who can enhance the performances of seasoned veterans such as Stapleton and Nicholson while at the same time eliciting almost comparable presentations from less experienced actors.

The fundamental weakness of REDS is not in execution but rather in the film's divided intentions. Love and politics are in this case uneasy bedfellows. REDS is admittedly a better attempt at achieving an epic than an American film has accomplished in a number of years. It is thus disappointing that it could not have achieved the singleness of purpose that would have made it completely successful.


Release Date: 1981

Production Line:
Warren Beatty for Paramount

Director: Warren Beatty

Cinematographer: Vittorio Storaro

File Editor: Dede Allen and Simon Relph

Additional Credits:
Art direction - Richard Sylbert
Music - Stephen Sondheim and Dave Grusin

MPAA Rating: PG

Run Time: 200 minutes

Cast:
John Reed - Warren Beatty
Louise Bryant - Diane Keaton
Max Eastman - Edward Herrmann
Grigory Zinoviev - Jerzy Kosinski
Eugene O'Neill - Jack Nicholson
Louis Fraina - Paul Sorvino
Emma Goldman - Maureen Stapleton
Floyd Dell - Max Wright
Paul Trullinger - Nicolas Coster
Speaker, Liberal Club - M. Emmet Walsh
Mr. Partlow - Ian Wolfe
Mrs. Partlow - Bessie Love
Carl Walters - MacIntyre Dixon
Helen Walters - Pat Starr
Mrs. Reed - Eleanor D. Wilson
Horace Whigham - George Plimpton
Pete Van Wherry - Gene Hackman
Dr. Lorber - Gerald Hiken
Joe Volski - Joseph Buloff
Allan Benson - Dave King
Julius Gerber - William Daniels

Review Sources:
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. November 30, 1981, p. 3
LOS ANGELES TIMES. December 4, 1981, VI, p. 1
THE NEW REPUBLIC. XVIII, December 16, 1981, pp. 26-27
THE NEW YORK TIMES. December 4, 1981, III, p. 8
THE NEW YORKER. LVII, December 21, 1981, p. 126
NEWSWEEK. XCVIII, December 7, 1981, pp. 83-84
SATURDAY REVIEW. IX, January, 1982, p. 52
TIME. CXVIII, December 7, 1981, pp. 66-67
VARIETY. November 30, 1981, p. 3

Named persons in Production Credits:
Warren Beatty

Studios named in Production Credits:
Paramount

Screenplay (Author):
Warren Beatty
Trevor Griffiths

Color



Video Available.
Genre:
Biography, Drama, Historical

Award Citations:
Academy Awards - Winner - Best Director - Warren Beatty
Academy Awards - Winner - Best Supporting Actress - Maureen Stapleton
Academy Awards - Winner - Cinematography - Vittorio Storaro
Academy Awards - Nomination - Best Actor - Warren Beatty
Academy Awards - Nomination - Best Picture
Academy Awards - Nomination - Best Actress - Diane Keaton
Academy Awards - Nomination - Best Supporting Actor - Jack Nicholson
Academy Awards - Nomination - Best Screenplay (Written Directly for the Screen) - Warren Beatty, Trevor Griffiths
Academy Awards - Nomination - Art Direction/Set Decoration - Richard Sylbert/Michael Seirton
Academy Awards - Nomination - Costume Design - Shirley Russell
Academy Awards - Nomination - Film Editing - Dede Allen, Craig McKay
Academy Awards - Nomination - Sound - Dick Vorisek
Academy Awards - Nomination - Sound - Tom Fleischman, Simon Kaye

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