Reds (1981)

Directed by Warren Beatty. Starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Maureen Stapleton, Jerzy Kosinski, Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino, Edward Herrmann, Nicholas Coster, Gene Hackman, William Daniels, Ian Wolfe, Bessie Love, M. Emmet Walsh, George Plimpton, Max Wright. [PG]

Beatty’s sprawling, passionate presentation of radical writer and journalist John Reed’s experiences chronicling the Russian Revolution and serving as a propagandist for the left wing socialist movement. A lot of time (too much, in fact) is spent on his romance with society gal Louise Bryant (Keaton)—including a love triangle with playwright Eugene O’Neil (Nicholson)—but since the personal perspective comes from the debate of rhetoric, this story is a revolution of ideas rather than actions, so three-plus hours of speeches, arguments, and article-writing would have grown tedious fast without it (it sometimes does with it, or at the very least, repetitive). Beatty won Best Director at the Academy Awards, his greatest feat being the conception of the framing sequences, which involve talking-head “witnesses” to the real Reed providing running commentary that informs, amuses, contradicts, and explains (their ranks include ACLU co-founder Roger Nash Baldwin, social activist Dora Russell, Congressman Hamilton Fish, and writer Henry Miller); he also produced and co-wrote. The second half plays out with more vigor, which is a rare feat for epics long enough to be separated by intermissions, but that vigor is at the service of more traditional storytelling, including sweeping shots of Reed running across a field while a skirmish rages around him and of Bryant traveling across a tundra to reunite with the man she loves; by that point, bring back the angry-bohos-in-a-coffee-house schtick. Also won Oscars for Maureen Stapleton (bringing much-needed warmth to the political grind as anarchist Emma Goldman) and Vittorio Storaro’s camerawork.

72/100