Reds (1981)

Dude, you really ought to give this another shot. It really is Beatty's best film and--at least I feel--it features one of the best performances in both Nicholson's and Keaton's CV. Plus, the interviews and the score are superb. This movie is basically both the last great actual epic to be released in Hollywood and the best documentary on the Greenwich Village scene wrapped into a big ball of awesome and topped with a fantastic score. You just have to love turning the Internationale and "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" into the two themes of the movie. The last scene alone is worth sitting through the damn thing.

You need to give it another shot. This is a great film with some incredible performances. My favorite was Jerzy Kosinski as Grigory Zinoviev. Jerzy was a refugee from the Communists who ended up playing a committed Communist...and did with utter conviction. (He was also a good writer).

This movie shows how the American Left developed in the 1930's and what the appeal of Russian Communism to this group was. Maureen Stapleton and Diane Keaton's characters gradually become disillusioned by their experiences while Warren Beatty's character becomes ever more committed. Beatty's scenes with both actresses towards the end of the movie are amazing.

I just watched this last night. I quite enjoyed it. It's much better than Dr Zhivago.

I thought Beatty (to whom my only previous exposure was BULLWORTH*) was excellent and the direction was excellent. I thought Keaton was great as well.


The first half really grabbed me, and to some degree the material in RUSSIA did as well. Sadly once Beatty goes to prison the whole thing kind of deflates and it never regains the sense we're history being made before our eyes with the film's protagonists as part of it. Instead it just sort of devolves into a weepy romanance movie.

But I really liked it all the same. Great acting, writing and an interesting story. Glad to see a movie where the communist agitators were the heroes. The interview portions were at first jarring, but ultimately I think they helped make the film feel more authentic. The early 19th century in America is a time that's hard to picture in alot of ways, outside the Gatsby existence that most of us think of when asked to envision life in 1915 New York ( I know Gatsby was the 20s, but you get my point). The film felt authentic and was very much a window into a world that history seems to have little interest in educating us about

BTW, I felt like Beatty kind of betrayed the revolution a bit himself. He pretended that going to russia the second time (to get the Official Communist Endorsement(tm) ) was a decision he made because he was a serious revolutionary, but I think it was clear that he wanted to feel important and get another chance to play the hero. He wanted that love from the crowd that he'd gotten there before. He was looking for a chance to play the role of Important American and have people hang on his every word

Instead all he was really doing was abandoning the movement in America. The reds didn't need his propaganda work as much as the Red White and Blue did. The scene where he is meeting with organizers in the barn is a great one. The meeting gets busted up by police and clearly the going was slow when it came to the fight for workers rights. However, I think ultimately that was where his talents would have been best used.

He basically abandoned the difficult work of incitement and left the country for a group of people who were already on board with revolution (despite the fact that when he spoke to them most couldn't understand a word he said)

PS All the people who whine about social security and FDR should thank their lucky stars. If Roosevelt hadn't made some sort of gesture towards social justice, I think Thomas Jefferson might have finially gotten his second American Revolution.

Roosevelt's polices basically prevented the nation from collapsing, and if they had not been in place before WW2, when everyone got back from the front we'd have demanded health care and welfare just like the Brits and Europeans did in the wake of that calamitous conflagration


*which I like, BTW

PS What happened to Nicholson? He just kind of disappeared. He went on that boat to go get Beatty and there is a scene of him in a bunk on board the ship, but that's the last we see him in the film if I'm not mistaken

Probably writing The Iceman Cometh

If you want a decent movie about America in the early 1900's see Ragtime.

It's one of those films that I found so overwhelming on the big screen that I never bothered trying to watch it on home video: not so much the spectacle (though that's certainly there), but the absorption into the lives of both the characters and the "witnesses," just felt like something that, in the living room, would feel too much like a History Channel documentary.

That was in the VHS days, of course; I really should get hold of the DVD.