ShareThisBy BRUCE DANCIS
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin once wrote, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
Lenin's quote came to mind while watching the new 25th anniversary edition DVD of "Reds," Warren Beatty's epic love story about writers John Reed and Louise Bryant, set amid the turbulence of American radical politics in the 1910s, World War I and the Russian Revolution (two discs, Paramount Home Entertainment, $19.99, rated PG).
There's Barry Diller, CEO of Paramount (at the time a division of the Gulf & Western conglomerate), interviewed in a DVD documentary on the making of "Reds," saying how much he supported Beatty's artistic vision. Paramount and a division of Barclay's Bank in London put up the bulk of the estimated $32 million to $35 million it took for Beatty, who served as producer, director, star and co-writer, to make "Reds."
That's a lot of capitalist investment in a movie that Beatty, on the DVD, self-deprecatingly calls "a 3 1/2-hour movie about a communist who dies."
As the DVD's extensive seven-part documentary, "Witness to 'Reds'," demonstrates, the movie was successfully promoted as a tragic love story between writers Reed (Beatty) and Bryant (Diane Keaton). But it creatively used artsy, radical Greenwich Village in the 1910s _ and such 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 subsequent civil war as the principal landscapes in which their relationship played out.
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. These senior citizens recall, with varying degrees of historical accuracy, Reed, Bryant and the times in which they lived. One of the DVD features explores how Beatty and his staff found these individuals and used them to offer documentary-like scene-setting for the movie.
"Reds" shows convincingly that many contemporary issues in politics and culture have their antecedents in the first decades of the 20th century. Debates over birth control and abortion, marriage and commitment, public life vs. private life, art vs. politics, and revolution vs. reform are given full expression from varying viewpoints throughout the lengthy film.
It's probably hard for modern audiences who think of the Soviet Union as a dull, ossified police state to realize that the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 was viewed by many radicals, industrial workers and intellectuals around the world as one of the epochal and transformative events in human history.
To Beatty's credit, his film captures the excitement the revolution stirred, both inside and outside Russia, while revealing how the Bolshevik leadership quickly began suppressing dissent within the revolutionary ranks on the way to becoming a one-party dictatorship.
The film is scrupulously fair in showing that the degeneration of revolutionary principles began quickly under Lenin's leadership (predating Stalin's later reign of terror).
"Reds" is the only major film that looks at American radicalism during this era, giving audiences glimpses of the old Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, the high-spirited radical magazines of the 1910s such as The Masses and the emergence of two competing communist parties that split with the socialists in 1919 over support for the Russian Revolution.
The DVD provides an extensive account of the arduous effort by Beatty and his crew to make "Reds." The movie took more than a year to film, and the production brought cast and crew to Finland (where Helsinki stood in for St. Petersburg/Petrograd, Russia), Spain (for Soviet Asia), the south coast of England (for Cape Cod), London (for most of the interior shots), Stockholm and Lapland, as well as New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Santa Fe and Taos, N.M.
Beatty's efforts certainly paid off artistically, bringing prestige to him and Paramount. Although "Reds," which received 12 Academy Award nominations, lost in an upset to "Chariots of Fire" in the best picture category, Beatty (direction), Stapleton (supporting actress) and Vittorio Storaro (cinematography) did take home Oscars.
Eventually, "Reds" made more than $40 million at the domestic box office, and once international figures are added in, it might have even ended up making money. So perhaps Paramount's decision to back Warren Beatty in filming his labor of love wasn't such a bad capitalist decision after all.
"Reds: 25th Anniversary Edition"
4 stars
Cast: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosinski, Paul Sorvino and Maureen Stapleton
Director: Beatty
Writers: Beatty and Trevor Griffiths
Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment
Rated PG
(Bruce Dancis can be reached at bdancis(at)sacbee.com)
