Reds (1981)

A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.

Director:

Warren Beatty

Writers:

Warren Beatty, Trevor Griffiths

Stars:

Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann

Won 3 Oscars. Another 27 wins & 20 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Warren Beatty	...	John Reed
Diane Keaton	...	Louise Bryant
Edward Herrmann	...	Max Eastman
Jerzy Kosinski	...	Grigory Zinoviev
Jack Nicholson	...	Eugene O'Neill
Paul Sorvino	...	Louis Fraina
Maureen Stapleton	...	Emma Goldman
Nicolas Coster	...	Paul Trullinger
M. Emmet Walsh	...	Speaker - Liberal Club
Ian Wolfe	...	Mr. Partlow
Bessie Love	...	Mrs. Partlow
MacIntyre Dixon	...	Carl Walters
Pat Starr	...	Helen Walters
Eleanor D. Wilson	...	Mrs. Reed
Max Wright	...	Floyd Dell

Storyline

This movie tells the true story of John Reed, a radical American journalist around the time of World War I. He soon meets Louise Bryant, a respectable married woman, who dumps her husband for Reed and becomes an important feminist and radical in her own right. After involvement with labor and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the October Revolution in 1917, when the Communists siezed power. Inspired, they return to the US, hoping to lead a similar revolution. A particularly fascinating aspect of the movie is the inclusion of interviews with "witnesses", the real-life surviving participants in the events of the movie.

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Plot Keywords:

russia | interview | russian civil war | marriage | dinner party | 

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Taglines:

Not since Gone With The Wind has there been a great romantic epic like it!

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Genres:

Biography | Drama | History | Romance

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Russian German French Finnish

Release Date:

4 December 1981 (USA)

Also Known As:

John Reed: The Ten Days That Shook the World

Filming Locations:

Twickenham Film Studios, St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

$35,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

SEK 3,179,562 (Sweden)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Barclays Mercantile Industrial Finance, JRS Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

195 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The explosion aboard the Communist train when Reed is arguing with his comrades was shot in one take, with only five minutes of sunlight left in the shooting day.

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Goofs

When Louise first comes to New York and finds John's apartment (during the time of WWI), some of the apartment windows behind her have air conditioning units.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Witness 1: [voiceover] Was that in 1913 or 17? I can't remember now. Uh, I'm, uh, beginning to forget all the people that I used to know, see?
Witness 2: [voiceover] Do I remember Louise Bryant? Why, of course, I couldn't forget her if I tried.

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Crazy Credits

As the credits roll, additional interviews with the 'witnesses' play.

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Connections

Featured in The 79th Annual Academy Awards (2007)

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Soundtracks

"Country Club - Ragtime Two-Step"
Written by Scott Joplin
Performed by Joshua Rifkin
Courtesy of Nonesuch Records

User Reviews

You Forget..

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I am old enough to have lived through (probably) three different Americas. These are radically different worlds. It isn't just the mood, styles or state of the economy; its the adoption of a whole cosmology. Religions change under our feet. Family, love, belonging. These things are malleable yet largely beyond our control and we forget what "things were like." Memory always is constructed in terms of the present world.

Always.

So projects like this are necessary. We cannot know who we are unless we remind ourselves who we were.

The ordinary fold here is a romance, folded into grand political actions. Here they are a bit more cerebral than usual, but never getting past the notion of simple justice.

The more unusual and complex fold is that we see a story based on real events and people. Interspersed with that story are interviews of people who were personally involved in the story. These are remarkable, the way they are captured and the way they are edited to overlap with and annotate the story. But much more engaging is that these are enticing people, many with minds and phases that invite us into their faces — made warmer and more open by Beatty's camera. I compare this to the "Up" serious and the contrast is astonishing. True, here we want to be informed about the lives of others, and the "Up" goals pretend that the people randomly selected decades ago are remotely worth knowing.

But these folks are. We want more, simply based on their implicit invitation, and we carry ourselves into the narrative more forcefully, sort of like the characters do. This is folding doing its job and doing it well. They remember. I remember, and therefore am.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.