Reds

Plot synopsis:
In 1915, married socialite Louise Bryant encounters the radical journalist John Reed for the first time at a lecture in Portland, Oregon, and she is intrigued with his idealism. Upon meeting him for an interview on international politics which lasts over the course of a night, she realizes that writing has been her only escape from her frustrated high society existence. Inspired to leave her husband, Bryant joins Reed in Greenwich Village, New York City, and becomes acquainted with the local community of activists and artists, including anarchist and author Emma Goldman and the playwright Eugene O'Neill. Later, they move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to concentrate on their writing, becoming involved in the local theatre scene. Through her writing, Bryant becomes a feminist and radical in her own right. Reed becomes involved in labor strikes with the "Reds" of the Communist Labor Party of America. Obsessed with changing the world, he grows restless and heads for St. Louis to cover the 1916 Democratic Convention.
During Reed's absence, Bryant falls into a complicated affair with O'Neill. Upon his return, Reed discovers the truth about the affair and realizes he still loves Bryant. The two marry secretly and make a home together in Croton-on-Hudson, north of New York City, but still have conflicting desires. When Reed admits to his own infidelities, Bryant takes a ship to Europe to work as a war correspondent. After a flare-up of a kidney disorder, Reed is warned to avoid excessive travel or stress, but he decides to take the same path. Reunited as professionals, the two find their passion rekindled as they are swept up in the fall of Russia's Czarist regime and the events of the 1917 Revolution.
The second part of the film takes place shortly after the publication of Ten Days that Shook the World. Inspired by the idealism of the Revolution, Reed attempts to bring the spirit of Communism to the United States, because he is disillusioned with the policies imposed upon Communist Russia by Grigory Zinoviev and the Bolsheviks. While attempting to leave Europe, he is briefly imprisoned and interrogated in Finland. He returns to Russia and is reunited with Bryant at the railway station in Moscow. By this point, Reed is growing progressively weaker as a result of his kidney disorder. Bryant helps nurse the ailing Reed, who eventually dies.

Tags: dramatic, romantic, avant garde, inspiring, boring

Review:
Beatty became Reed in more than one sense--not only did he act the part, but he directed the movie in a way reminiscent of the kind of "new journalistic" style that Reed and his fellow MASSES writers pioneered, mixing the drama with interviews of people who knew JR, Louise, etc.The film also sort of puts forward the question, "What if, instead of running back to Russia (to die of kidney failure and mistreatment by the CP), Jack Reed had stayed in this country to build the CP?
Would it have turned out to become Stalinist?" According to Howe and Coser, who wrote a good book on THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY, much like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, Reed was the ONLY leader who was independent, who had some real backbone.The best part of the movie is when Emma Goldmann, played by Maureen Stapleton, tells Jack that "it doesn't work" (i.e. statist, bureaucratic socialism that the Bolsheviks were instituting as a grossly mistaken response to the economic crisis and Allied invasion of Russia after the Revolution).
A personal triumph for co-writer-producer-director-star Warren Beatty, who won the Oscar for his direction and gives a cautious, interesting performance as early-1900s American journalist John Reed, who shared a tumultuous courtship and marriage to Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), a socialite and self-described writer.
"Reds" is a 200-minute epic masterpiece which deals with left-wing American journalist John Reed (Warren Beatty in an Oscar-nominated performance) and his coverage of the Russian Revolution of the 1910s.
Warren Beatty's 'Reds' is a terrific film that is not only great story telling in the conventional Hollywood way but also has an original style of narration told in many ways from the point of view of witnesses to the real story who lived during the days the film is centred around.The film is especially significant to view since the iron curtain in Russia has come down and 'Reds' is a movie that never looks dated and stresses the fact that morals at the early part of the 20th century were about the same as they are now.
It's just that no one discussed it back then and it emphasizes that times change but people don't.With top notch performances from the entire cast, it is one of the few films to be nominated for an Oscar in all four acting categories and was victorious in the Best Supporting Actress category for Maureen Stapleton although the film's best performance comes from Diane Keaton who should have won her second Oscar.To date, Beatty is the only film maker to be Oscar nominated for Best Director, Actor, Screenwriter and Producer twice for the same film.
It's in part certainly very much about ideology, but it avoids sharp, well-honed edges or large hard-etched "points." John Reed (played by the film's impresario, its sole producer, director, co-author, and star, Warren Beatty) was a man who happened to be able to write a first-hand account of the Bolshevik revolution, a long-time bestseller called Ten Days That Shook the World.
Roger Ebert thinks the movie "never succeeds in convincing us that the feuds between the American socialist parties were much more than personality conflict and ego-bruisings" (that may depend on how hard we need to be convinced to begin with), but we do care about Reds (Ebert thinks) as "a traditional Hollywood romantic epic, a love story written on the canvas of history, as they used to say in the adsit is the thinking man's Doctor Zhivago, told from the other side, of course." What about the choice of Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as the lovers?
Beatty weaves other significant characters into the fabric of his drama, notably the leftist activist Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton, who got the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) and the radical editor Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann), who are members of the same political-intellectual salon into which he brings Louise, as is the playwright Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson).Beatty's filmic recreation of John Reed is good in not being too serious or too idealized: in having a silly side Beatty's Reed perhaps has something of himself.
One walks out convinced that the material was complex enough to be worthy of such length, even if Beatty and his co-writer Trevor Griffiths could not whip it all into shape.Whether it's all worth it on the stage of international cinema or not, this is a film of historical interest as a great independent project, begun logically in the Seventies, but completed right in the middle of Hollywood by an American intelligent and engaged enough to be star, director, writer, and producer, to raise $35 million to do it, and to make more or less the movie he wanted to make  right in the middle, so to speak, of a wave of conservatism and yuppiedom, in the early Eighties, when people were thinking about making money and making it, when Ronald Reagon was President of the United States.
Director Warren Beatty's epic love story about American writers John Reed and Louise Bryant,set amid of the turbulence of American politics in the 1910's World War I and the Russian revolution that set this movie into plain focus.
The movie itself is astounding to behold and is a tragic love story between the writers John Reed(Warren Beatty),and Louise Bryant(Diane Keaton).
But it creatively used artsy,radical Greenwich Village in the 1910's-and such as real-life characters as playwright Eugene O'Neill(Jack Nicholson),and anarchist activist Emma Goldman(Maureen Stapleton)-as well as the drama of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war as the principal landscapes in which their relationship plays out.Director Beatty also made creative use of on-camera "testimony" by the likes of novelists Henry Miller and Rebecca West,Republican politician Hamilton Fish,comic George Jessel and civil libertarian Roger Baldwin.
I'll grant that the cast is a good one, headed up by Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, with a smaller part for Jack Nicholson, supported by lesser known but very talented actors like Maureen Stapleton, Paul Sorvino, Dolph Sweet and Ian Wolfe among others, but even a good cast can't turn a complete snoozer into an Academy Award winner, so I'm just left wondering what happened with this one.Essentially the movie tells the story of left-wing American journalist Jack Reed (Beatty), whose journey to Russia in 1917 to report on the Revolution there made him a committed Communist.
Twenty-five years later, the film still carries a powerful message of the determination of love, and the dangers of fear.With the Cold War still raging full strength and America still nursing wounds from the Vietnam Era, Warren Beatty's epic historical drama of the rise of Communism in America may have been a gamble, but with a stellar cast and riding the wave of the success of Heaven Can Wait, the Academy Award winning director brought his dream to life.
The film garnered more Academy Award nominations  twelve  than any other film in the previous 15 years.Based on actual events, the film tells the story of John Reed (Beatty), American Communist, activist and journalist, who falls for feminist/writer Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton).
That this great historical perspective could rise out of that is truly a testimony to Beatty's talent.There are many great acting performances in this film, including one of Jack Nicholson's very best as Eugene O'Neil, as well as those of Paul Sorvino, Gene Hackman and George Plimpton who demonstrate the range of persons who touched Jack Reed's life.
Remember historians have a vested interest in their interpretation- which by placing into lineal order in a history (non-fiction) book they are placing into a narrative form.Beatty and Keaton are great in this film- with brilliant support from Gene Hackman,Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino & Maureen Stapleton.
The pair hope to lead a similar revolution back in the U.S. Reed founded the American Communist Party and was in fact eventually buried at the Kremlin wall.The acting is not the cause of my distaste for the movie as competent stars, Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, play the lead roles.
REDS, scored 12 Oscar nominations (with 3 wins) and finally won Beatty an Oscar for BEST DIRECTOR among a combined 14 nominations throughout his eminent career so far (as actor, director, screen-writer and producer), undeniably can be reckoned as his most enterprising and taxing project, and is also notorious for its behind-the-scene stories such as Beatty's extravagant conceit in the director's chair and his off-screen romance with co-star Keaton (which ended right before the extended shooting days).Political elements aside, REDS quintessentially is an ode to the undying love between Jack Reed and his wife Louise Bryant (Keaton), also a radical journalist, since during most of its lengthy narrative, the latter is the unaltered focus of this epic and Beatty assiduously tells their relationship from her angle.
Things go downhill after they get married when monogamy stands in the way of their life, selfishly and immaturely Louise uses Eugene to get back at Jack, only to be taken aback by Jack's philandering notion of partnership.They separate for a while, until in 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution, becomes the essential catalyst of their undimmed love, witnessing the revolution in the front row, and realising what a sea change their Socialist belief can make in the war-trodden foreign land, they work shoulder-to-shoulder as comrades, write first-hand reports of the revolution and return to USA with an evolutionarily reshaped prospect of life, which is also where their political ideologies diverge.Jack passionately throws himself into politics, to bring Communism to his native soil, against the widespread fear that it would also usurp the democratic government of United States, whereas Louise hold a different opinion towards the issue, as she claims, she is deeply inspired by the Russian revolution and how proletariat can stand up and takes the regime, but she is also clear- minded about the fact that it is completely another situation for socialism to bloom here in America.
The documentary approach is quite risky, not only it adds considerable length to the already protracted magnitude, it also takes a chance with a more elaborate editing process in the post-production, how come it failed to nab the editing trophy in the Oscar?REDS received four acting nominations in four categories, firstly, Beatty is apparently too old for the role (Reed dies at the age of 33, while Beatty was already over 40 during the filming), but if one is not familiar with the archetype, his very sympathetic portrayal is fairly engaging, we can feel for Jack's idealistic enthusiasm, his intense affection to Louise (there are at least three sex scenes to prove his prowess, even after he loses one kidney), and the root of his tragedy - his erudite perception of the society fatally conflicts with his simplistic modus operandi.
Keaton, by comparison, really busts her chops to embody Louise as a flawed but flesh-and-blood human being, sometimes she is wilful, vexatious, self-contradictory, other times, she is lucid, gallant and endearing, all reflect from her imperfect visage, this is her best dramatic performance to date.As charismatic as Nicholson, the only Oscar winner among the quartet is Maureen Stapleton, finally paid her due for her fourth attempt in the category, she plays Emma Goldman, the no bullshit anarchist, whose limited presence seems rather paltry against the film's duration, and she is not even a key player in the game, but whenever she is on the screen, Stapleton seizes every opportunity to remind viewers of her progressive thinking and truculent spirit, all intrigues us to know her character more, when will be a biography film about her?
Finally on DVD in a pristine print transfer, it's hard to believe it's been a quarter century since I've seen this movie, yet it still casts an intriguing spell probably because Beatty seems so enraptured by the turbulent story of John Reed, the American journalist-turned-Communist activist who provided a vital and controversial first-hand account of the Russian Revolution of 1917, "Ten Days That Shook the World".The film itself covers the last five years of the young writer's life (he was only 32 when he died), and Beatty smartly uses talking heads by way of 31 surviving eyewitnesses of the period as a means to explain the context of the story being told.
Reds (1981) tells the story of John Reed (1887-1922), an American journalist, poet and communist activist, famous for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution.His intention was to bring the spirit and idealism of Communism to the United States.This movie isn't only about the politics of that era but it tells also the love story between Reed and Louise Bryant (1885-1936), an American journalist and writer.She was well known for her Marxist and anarchist beliefs and the essays she wrote on radical political and feminist themes.Their marriage was troublesome from time to time and Bryant was the lover of the playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953).Warren Beatty has made a brilliant biographical drama that's highly intellectual.His acing work in the film portraying the main star is terrific.Diane Keaton plays Louise.She's known for her portrayals of thinking women.We've seen that in those Woody Allen movies and others.Jack Nicholson does very fine job as Eugene O'Neill.And so does Maureen Stapleton as the anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940).Edward Herrman plays Max Eastman.Novelist Jerzy Kosinski plays the Soviet Communist politician Grigory Zinoviev.Paul Sorvino plays Louis Fraina.M.Emmett Walsh is Liberal Club speaker.Gene Hackman plays Pete Van Wherry.Max Wright is Floyd Dell.Jerry Hardin is Harry.William Daniels is Julius Gerber.Beatty won a Oscar for directing and Stapleton for her performance.Vittorio Storaro got one for Cinematography.What's interesting to me as a Finn is that part of this movie was filmed in Finland.Reed was actually imprisoned here for 13 weeks in 1919.In this film we see the famous Finnish actor and movie maker Åke Lindman as a Scandinavian Escort for Diane Keaton's character.Another Finnish actor, also doctor, Pertti Weckström plays Finnish Doctor.Reds is a thinking man's movie.A movie for those who know a lot of stuff, or at least want to learn.I guess I belong to the latter.You learn a lot from movies..
Reds is the story of John Reed and Louise Bryant, their love set against the background of the American Left in the World War I years and the Russian Revolution.
Those were both heady and disillusioning times for those on the political Left and Warren Beatty as director and star does a good job in capturing the moments.John Reed, middle class kid from Portland, Oregon has great writing and polemic skills and reporter's instinct for news.
A radical American journalist (Warren Beatty) becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.This film seems to be something like a docudrama, before there really was such a thing as a docudrama.
Based on the true story of Jack Reed (played by Warren Beatty) and Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), two American socialists and writers.
The entire supporting cast rises to the level of Beatty and Keaton, with superstars like Jack Nicholson, Maureen Stapleton (who won an Oscar for her performance), and Gene Hackman abandoning their typical star mannerisms and turning in some of the best work of their careers in bit parts.The film also benefits form the then-progressive technique utilized by Beatty where he includes filmed interviews with "witness," real-life individuals who knew either Reed or Brooks and were active members of the sociopolitical scene that the picture recreates.
1981 was a good year for movies and this film won the Best Director Oscar for Warren Beatty, and I can say that he deserved it.
The story is more about the relationship between Jack and Louise than it is about Socialism and the Bolshevik Revolution; yet we see how both of those played out in their relationship and learn a little bit about both throughout the film (which is 3 hours, by the way!) I thought Beatty did a fairly good job with his part, but I've never been a fan of Diane Keaton and this role is no exception.
RELEASED IN 1981 and written & directed by Warren Beatty, "Reds" stars Beatty as real-life radical American journalist and socialist, John "Jack" Reed, who becomes involved with the Russian revolution, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to America.
This movie is a great retelling of the life of American communist John Reed and his girlfriend, played respectively by Beatty and Diane Keaton.
A definite film for history buffs and others."Reds" tells the story of American journalist Jack Reed and Louise Bryant, a woman who gave up everything she had in America, and followed the Communist reporter Reid to the new Soviet Union.Excellent for its historic detail, the film also shows the rise of socialism in America as Paul Sorvino is quite effective in one scene depicting this.Then, of course, we have Communist sympathizers such as Eugene O'Neill played, in an Oscar nominated performance, by Jack Nicholson.Director Warren Beatty plays Jack Reed and Diane Keaton is Louise Bryant.
Centered on the life and career of John Reed, the journalist and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days that Shook the World, Warren Beatty's 'Reds' is An Epic!
The cast was a 'whos who' of Hollywood libtard elites.Having said that it could have been a good film 'maybe; a great one but Beatty got 'romantic' and in place of a real dialogue repeatedly had 'dance scenes' or the focus swung to his squeeze at the time Diane 'Louise Bryant' Keaton.The two great performances were done by Maureen Stapleton playing Emma Goldblum and Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill.
See Red. Warren Beatty's 1981 epic "Reds" concerns radical American journalist John Reed and his involvement in the Communist movement both at home and in Russia around the time of the first World War. However, it is also a love story focusing on Reed and fellow writer Louise Bryant.The film's subject matter is intriguing but given the political aspect I'm sure that it won't appeal to all sensibilities.