Anticipation Growing for Reds

Vincent Canby’s original review of Reds in 1981.

An amazing quote from the review:

Most astonishing is the way the movie, which abounds with Great Moments of History, including the Bolshevik takeover of the Winter Palace in Petrograd, avoids the patently absurd, even as Reed and Louise, drunk on the excitement of the successful revolution they’ve just witnessed, make love in a cold Petrograd flat to the strains of ”The Internationale.” The secret, I think, is that the film sees Reed and Louise as history’s golden children, crass and self-obsessed but genuinely committed to causes they don’t yet fully understand.

Wonderful observation here:

These, however, are minor faults in a large, remarkably rich, romantic film that dramatizes – in a way that no other commercial movie in my memory has ever done – the excitement of being young, idealistic and foolish in a time when everything still seemed possible.

(I actually loved the montage of Louise Bryant’s difficult journey to Russia overland and ice … but I agree with him about the reunion scene – it doesn’t quite work.)

And the whole Provincetown Players thing … and Louise Bryant trying to be an “actress” – and Jack Nicholson (playing Eugene O’Neill) having a private response to how atrocious she is an actress – so funny – his eyes go dead, he sits and watches the atrocity before him, with dead dead eyes … You can just see how much it HURTS him, like physically HURTS him, to hear her say HIS WORDS in such a dead and affected voice. Jack. He’s just great in this film.

I can’t wait. It opens in New York this weekend for one week only – and I’m gonna be out of town for most of next week – so Allison and I are determined to get into one of the matinees on Saturday.

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3 Responses to Anticipation Growing for Reds

  1. John says:

    Reds, to me, is like reading Sholokhov’s “And Quiet Flows the Don” – you get an idea of the real fervor and response to injustice that drove people to dedicate themselves to what in retrospect was a spectacularly stupid, and ultimately evil enterprise. Their fault was not in wanting to right those wrongs, but in not realize how sociopaths gravitate towards utopian movements because of the control over others that can be exerted via those pathways. The signs were there, even in the early days of Valdimir Ilych’s rule (Iron Felix, anyone?). But not everyone wanted to see them.

    I think that I would be far to the left of where I am politically if I had been born in that time and not had the advantage of seeing the history of the 20th century.

    Two asides you might like, Sheila – the first place I visited in Red Square was John Reed’s marker in the Kremlin Wall. Also, if you have read “Tikhii Don”, you can hear Sholokhov’s actual voice here (it works on Real Player) – the Russian page (with his picture) is here.

  2. red says:

    That’s one of the reasons I love the movie – it’s ground-level. Soemtimes it’s even hard to follow – but I think that’s appropriate, hard to keep your bearings when you’re swept away. You’re like: “Now … are those REAL Communists … or … wait … who is THAT group … and why are they fighting with each other in smoky auditoriums?”

    I love the feeling that it’s really happening.

    Also I love Jerzy Kozinski as Zinoviev who really comes off looking like a prick.

    hahaha

    I remember you telling me about going to “see” John Reed in the walls of the Kremlin – amazing.

    I’ll listen to that link when I get home, John – awesome, thank you!

  3. red says:

    And amen to your comment on utopias.

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