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Reds [25th Anniversary Edition] [2 Discs]

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Reds DVD
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Reds [25th Anniversary Edition] [2 Discs] on DVD


Few filmmakers other than Warren Beatty would have had the courage and vision to fashion an epic film from the life of famed American Communist John Reed (who is the only US citizen buried in the Kremlin). The film is an effort to humanize a political movement that has previously been depicted on screen in a series of unsubtle and prejudicial broad strokes. The film begins in 1915, when Reed (Beatty) makes the acquaintance of married Portland journalist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). So persuasive is Reed's point of view--and so charismatic is Reed himself-- that Bryant kicks over the traces and joins Reed and his fellow radicals. Among the famous personages depicted herein are Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson) and Max Eastman (Richard Herrmann). The second half of this nearly-200-minute film skims through the years when Reed, now a Russian resident, becomes disillusioned by the harsh realities of Bolshevism. Despite the celebrity line-up of real-life "witnesses" to the events depicted in the film (ranging from novelist Henry Miller to comedian George Jessel!), historians took Reds to task for its oversimplification of events and its laundering of the notoriously promiscuous Louise Bryant. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
  • Sound By: Dolby Digital Stereo
  • Released By: Paramount
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Witness to REDS:
The Rising
Comrades
Testimonials
Revolution - Part 1
Revolution - Part 2
The March
Propaganda

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  • Reds DVD
Reds DVD

Editorial Reviews

An achievement in epic storytelling and historical romance, Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) combines American Communist John Reed's experience of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath with the intimate relationship between Reed and Louise Bryant, his match in progressive thinking. Structured through the reminiscences of two dozen actual witnesses, from Henry Miller to George Jessel, the film meticulously recreates the culturally volatile World War I period, from the bourgeois Portland abandoned by Diane Keaton's Louise to the passionate Greenwich Village bohemia of Beatty's Reed, Maureen Stapleton's no-nonsense Emma Goldman, and Jack Nicholson's cynically romantic Eugene O'Neill. Reed's final reunion with lover/comrade Bryant poignantly reveals the personal cost of his political beliefs. Praised as an impressive accomplishment, regardless of its historical liberties, Reds earned 12 Oscar nominations, including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor for Nicholson, and four for Beatty as producer, director, actor, and co-writer. One of the last vestiges of artistically ambitious 1970s "auteur" Hollywood, Reds won Oscars for Vittorio Storaro's cinematography, Stapleton's supporting performance, and Beatty's direction, but it lost Best Picture to Chariots of Fire. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi