I watched a while back ago and then recently it was on TCM or something and watched it again. I think it’s a really great film and a great accomplishment on Warren Beattys’ part. I’m not a bis fan but his acting was great particularly in this film and he had a hand in many aspects of the film, not only in directing, but in writing and producing. And of course it was filmed by one of the greatest cinematographers Vittorio Storaro.
It was certainly acclaimed at the time – didn’t some respected American critic (was it Schickel? I can’t remember) liken it to Citizen Kane? I watched it myself a couple of months ago and it holds up well: Jack Nicholson is great giving a subtle performance at a time when his acting veered towards self-parody.
It’s a great film and proof positive of Beatty’s seriousness and dedication to both film and politics.
Needless to say it went right over the head of Peter Biskind who views Beatty as nothing more than a pussyhoud.
Proper undeerstanding of the film requires a lot of reading. Not just Reed’s own “Ten Days That Shook the World” but also the writings of Emma Goldman, and the Gelbs’ life of Eugene O’Neill.
I doubt there are many in here who are up to that — preferrign the pre-chewed Fanboy “cinema” of Q.T.
one of the very best movies ever made
and as i have said before the witnesses are one of cinemas great inventions, funny sad, trustworthy, forgetful, everything about this movie works for me, actors chemistry, it length and accessibility. Plus its a beautiful looking movie; its like a lean film with no dead spots.
Its worth noting that beatty routinely did 60 takes a scene, so did kubrick but whereas kubrick’s films often had a cold quality to the scenes. Beatty’s feel lively and almost improvised.
Yeah I’m sure there are very few people here who are up to the task of reading books, Mr. Ehrenstein.
I like the film a great deal, but can’t help feeling that the section involving O’Neill’s affair with Louise is a problem, as Nicholson and Keaton (each doing some of their very best work) raise the acting bar to a level that Beatty can’t approach for the rest of the film.
i think that nicholson and keaton feel contemporary so people respond better to them
acting wise, for me, it is Beatty’s movie
So Den, are you saying that Beatty doesn’t feel contemporary?
What I find interesting about Nicholson and Keaton’s work in REDS is that each seems to purge most of their bad habits in this film. Nicholson has never been so comparatively restrained, and Keaton hasn’t been so tic-free since this film. Beatty is fine, no doubt, but I don’t think he can match Keaton or Nicholson in this. Or Maureen Stapleton. Or Jack Kehoe.
beatty doesnt feel contemporary to me no, beatty is always beatty and always believable for me (post bonnie and clyde before that he gave lousy performaces with only a few exceptions)—see my town and country review to get an idea of what I find as Beatty’s strengths.
i agree about the bad habits being purged Nicholson is subtle in this as is keaton but they still seem modern, some actors just do no matter what.
I can honestly say I love all the performances but Beatty shines for me, particularly the end scenes and the train sequence
Can you be a little more specific about what is so “contemporary” about Keaton and Nicholson in REDS, as opposed to Beatty? I’m not seeing what you mean. Do you mean that Beatty is able to channel the 1910s in ways that Keaton and Nicholson can’t? Can you cite some examples?
Not looking to pick a fight, truly, I think this is an interesting point.
>>What I find interesting about Nicholson and Keaton’s work in REDS is that each seems to purge most of their bad habits in this film. Nicholson has never been so comparatively restrained, and Keaton hasn’t been so tic-free since this film.<<
That’s certainly a credit to Beatty the director, isn’t it? And Beatty rarely gets cited for his directing skills.
It’s too bad that Beatty the actor couldn’t benefit from Beatty the director being able to watch him…
well I dont know that I can site examples of specific scenes
I guess the easiest way to put it is that imo Nicholson is always Nicholson (sometimes with his mannerisms taking over too much as in The Shining) and his persona is sort of a modern one (that is why he seems a least a bit out of place in period films like the Corman Poe movies) and Keaton is always Keaton (sometimes her mannerisms can take over too much as in Somethings Got to Give and Baby Boom) again very modern (think of annie hall or looking for mr goodbar) which is why she rarely takes period pictures.
Beatty on the other hand, I believe fused his acting persona with his old fashioned West Virgina upringing (he has an awwshucks old fashioness to him) and he is ofen very believable in period: Bonnie and Clyde, Bugsy and Splendor in the Grass for instance or even old fashioned films that arent period like Love Affair or Heaven Can Wait. The second part of his acting persona is a savy don juan, which is why he works in modern films as well.
Harry, yes, I agree.
Den, thanks for elaborating. I see what you mean.
“Proper undeerstanding of the film requires a lot of reading. Not just Reed’s own “Ten Days That Shook the World” but also the writings of Emma Goldman, and the Gelbs’ life of Eugene O’Neill.
I doubt there are many in here who are up to that — preferrign the pre-chewed Fanboy “cinema” of Q.T."
i present to you the King of Snobbery, Doctor Ehrenstein, who pre-judges everything but his own self.
dude, at least correct your grammar or i’ll resurrect Rosa Luxembourg from the dead to punish you, muahahaha.
Dimitris, what problems did you have with the grammar in David’s post?
Den, I think you’re dead on as regards Beatty’s acting. I think it’s under=rated because, first, it’s alway’s rooted in Beatty but he can be subtly different from role to role. He played the “aw, shucks” kid in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS in just about the sma etime period (I think) as the kvetchy gigolo in THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE. And these were not long after he played that absolutely insufferable charcter on DOBIE GILLIS. I think because his performance style is not very flashy a lot of people don’t grasp how good his work really is.
You’re also dead on about Keaton and Nicholson – what is it about his performance in, say, THE RAVEN that doesn’t convince? Yes, you have Karloff, Price & Court coming from an older acting tradition, but you also have Lorre making things up as he went along (reportedly no one knew what was going to come out of his mouth next on the set) & could essentially be said to be working in a modern performance style?
oh, pardon me,i meant his twisted vocabulary, unless there are specific words by the name of “undeerstanding” or “preferrign”.
those are not typos, those are signs of boredom. and yes, bad grammar too. c’mon Roscoe, don’t try to go against me.
yes Harry those two characters the aww shucks and the gigolo are basically the two sides of beatty. He is at his best when they mesh (like Bugsy’s wonderment at Hollywood and at Virginia mixed with his womanizing and killing) or George’s wonderment at loves beginings but cadish nature in regards to his sport fucking in Shampoo. Probably obvious by now but Beatty is my favorite actor.
BTW I love Dobie Gillis (one of my favorite shows, really)
but it was better once Beatty was replaced
>>those are not typos, those are signs of boredom. and yes, bad grammar too. c’mon Roscoe, don’t try to go against me.<<
Because dimitris can outdo you in typos & bad grammar any day of the week!
“Because dimitris can outdo you in typos & bad grammar any day of the week!”
i’m so glad i know better English than people like you mister Long….
Uh-huh.
I am also an admirer of REDS. Breaking up the narrative with the recollections of the witnesses (including Henry Miller!) was unusual for a “mainstream” Hollywood film; it was more like an Ingmar Bergman or Godard movie in that regard.
I should mention, though, that the film’s co-screenwriter, Trevor Griffiths, lambasted Beatty in interviews for changing the more leftist political messages in the film in favor of more individualistic scenes of romance and arguments between Beatty and Diane Keaton. Here’s a sample of one of the reviews that take this ulktra-leftist tact:
Beatty’s subject is John Reed, the American journalist who chronicled the Russian revolution in “Ten Days that Shook the World” and later founded the Communist Labor Party of America; he is the only American to be buried at the Kremlin. And yet “Reds” is neither a conventional biopic nor a leftist polemic. By observing Reed largely through the eyes of his wife, Louise Bryant, and through the reminiscences of “witnesses” who pop up to share their fuzzy memories of Reed, Bryant and the early American Left in documentary-style interviews, Beatty fashions his movie into an elegy for the end of political idealism. He shows how the messy reality of life and the mundane failures of those in power intrude upon even the most inspirational revolutionary zeal. And he argues that true communism never took flight and never even stood a chance in the Soviet Union, not with the western world determined to isolate it and its leaders consumed by paranoia and consolidation of power. I was reminded again how the word “communist” is really a misnomer when applied to the Soviets or to China, Cuba, North Korea etc. Their leaders may call themselves communists, but they are oligarchs and demagogues determined to deny power to the people and quash dissent. That’s not what John Reed fought for.
Another view: There’s an attempt to correlate the “free love” theories of the 1910s with the ethos of the swinging ‘70s, but this parallel is mitigated by the mushy home life scenes between John and Louise, where it always seems to be Christmas or someone’s birthday and cute puppies clamor to watch them make lingering love in silhouette (I hope that these voyeuristic canines aren’t supposed to represent the audience). Beatty and Keaton’s fight scenes are flashy, but the “shot/reverse shot” style of the staging makes a fetish of individual performance at the expense of interaction. And likable as they are, neither Beatty nor Keaton looks or sounds like they could make a living as writers; their familiar stuttering, fumbling mannerisms make them seem inarticulate, and when they reel off political dogma, they don’t seem to understand what they’re saying. … Sometimes the juxtaposition of the witnesses’ comments and the narrative sections don’t make much sense, and the second half of the film gets lost in obscure political arguments, but it really founders in the last third when Beatty stages a fictional journey for Bryant where she trudges across the ice floes to get to Her Man (the real Bryant had moved on and had another lover).
Again, overall, I appreciated what the film was trying to accomplish but thought that by SOMEWHAT “Hollywoodizing” it that Beatty made the film’s focus more about whether Clyde Barrow would stay with Annie Hall than whether the Bolshevik Revolution would succeed or not. This is a fault of MANY American films that start off dealing with political matters — they inevitably shift emphasis to the constitution of the heterosexual couple or the survival of the family: MODERN TIMES, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, etc. The U.S. is an individualistic society and its cinema reflects that — unlike the early Soviet cinema being made in John Reed’s heyday, where the people as a whole, the proletariat, were the heroes.
Anyone who heard Beatty’s Oscar speech when he won Best Director will remember his praise of Paramount Pictures, that bastion of capitalism, for allowing him to make a film he considered truly revolutionary. Most of my Trotskyite and Stalinist friends thought the film was COUNTER-revolutionary because although it showed the heady idealistic early “10 days that shook the world,” its ultimate message was that communism had failed.
I cant quite agree with u frank but Interesting to note that both Mailer and jules feiffer called Bulworth Beatty’s best and only true political movie.
I wish there had been a lot more of that amazing train, battle scenes, marches and banners in the street,
and just raw spectacle. That much was a marvel to behold, and exceptionally well mounted.
But Jesus, those endless arguments over CP minutia, and the bewildering shifts from one
political rally to the next heated, incomprehensible rant-fest, simply were not engaging.
The bolshevik jibber jabber, after so long,
holds interest only for a bland, soulless Central Committee bureaucrat slaving away in some gray office.
Or a true believer.
Speaking of which, it’s a tough slog (not to mention the empathetic embarrassment)
watching these idealists bang their heads against a totalitarian wall while humorless zealots
demand that more walls be built (metaphorically speaking, at least until 1961).
That poor old woman (one of the far-too-many talking heads) warbling the internationale—
it was just awful.
Who knew that communism would be destroyed from within by its own mind-numbing dullness?
Anyway, Nicholson stole every scene he was in.
Reds reminds me of The Formula. Scott! Brando!
it also reminds me of Heavens Gate
I Love REDS, its a wonderful recreation of period, some colorful historical figures, and the idealism and diversity of the socialist/anarchist movements before the Bolshevik Revolution changed everything and created new and bitterly divided alignments on the left. It certainly plays with the facts a bit, and focuses heavily on the romance, but it all serves the film well. I think its probably Warren Beatty’s best role, you can tell how invested he was in the character and the message of the film. Diane Keaton is great as well, and Nicholson is his usual smarmy self.
I regard it as one of the last truly great Hollywood historical epics produced, all the more remarkable for its far-leftist politics (and kind of ridiculously long running time!).
Incidentally, John Reed was from Portland, OR- my hometown, Yea!
OP
Its funny you say that, I feel that same way. The exact same thing happened to me. Shit movie.
Archie Bunker types used to say “Better dead than Red”.
Charlesdegaulle
I watched half of it a while back but never got around to finishing it. It didn’t seem too bad but I’ve noticed it doesn’t get much attention from film lovers nowadays even though it seemed to be a big film in its heyday.