Big Red One?
11-20-04, 11:30 AM
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"There's No Glory in War, Unless You Mean Survival
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 2, 2004
In late 1941, just after Pearl Harbor, Samuel Fuller, like thousands of other young men, enlisted in the United States Army. At 29 Fuller was already a hardened reporter, a budding pulp novelist and an aspiring filmmaker, and while his reasons for joining up were as patriotic as the next guy's, he also had something of an ulterior motive.
As he put it later in his memoirs, in characteristically hardboiled style, "I had a helluva opportunity to witness the biggest crime story of the century, and nothing was going to stop me from being an eyewitness."
Over the next four years, from North Africa to Sicily and from Omaha Beach to the Folkenau concentration camp, in what is now the Czech Republic, Fuller witnessed atrocities and absurdities beyond anything he could have anticipated. When it was all over, he went on to write and direct his share of crime stories ("Pickup on South Street" and "Underworld U.S.A.", among others), and a few combat pictures as well. But through it all he nursed the ambition to turn his experiences into a dogface epic, to be called "The Big Red One" in honor of the storied First Infantry Division, in which he had served.
This weekend, seven years after Fuller's death, 24 years after its initial, botched release, and almost 60 years after V-E day, "The Big Red One" is finally here, in a form close to what Fuller intended. It's better late than never, and better than just about anything else to hit screens this year.
Fuller tried to make the movie in the late 1950's, but the project never got off the ground, partly because the studio insisted, against Fuller's wishes, that John Wayne be the star. Finally, in 1979, Fuller shot his magnum opus independently, on a tight budget in Israel and Ireland with Lee Marvin and a cast of young up-and-comers, including Robert Carradine and Mark Hamill (then and now best known as Luke Skywalker).
According to legend, the director presented a four-and-a-half-hour cut to Warner Brothers, which the studio (with Fuller's acquiescence) chopped to 113 minutes and released in 1980. It was an interesting, uneven movie. In those days of "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now", it probably also seemed more than a little dated - an old geezer telling war stories that nobody wanted to hear anymore.
Well, gather round, kids. Today and tomorrow, at the New York Film Festival, an expanded version of "The Big Red One" will be shown, before making its way to theaters in the next months, and then to DVD. Thanks to the efforts of the film critic and historian Richard Schickel and others, more than 40 minutes have been added to the original release. The result is a messy, muscular masterpiece.
In its newer, more capacious form, "The Big Red One" is a grand three-part chronicle of four young soldiers (one of whom looks a lot like the young Fuller) and their leathery, unnamed Sergeant, in North Africa, in Italy and then in Northern Europe. Each segment is composed of rough, vivid vignettes, some comprising only a handful of shots, which combine horror, humor and the tough, fatalistic humanism that was Fuller's trademark.
It is tempting, at this point, to lapse into breathless summary: the movie is full of the kind of scenes you can't wait to rush outside and tell someone about, if only to confirm that you really witnessed them. A Belgian woman gives birth on the floor of a tank; a ruthless Nazi sniper turns out to be a 10-year-old boy who is punished with a spanking from the Sergeant; a louche German orderly at a field hospital in Tunis kisses Lee Marvin on the mouth; Stéphane Audran, feigning madness, dances through an insane asylum occupied by the Nazis, quietly cutting German throats with a straight razor. I could go on and on, but you have to see it for yourself. The blunt, haunting power of these scenes, many of which also turn up in Fuller's autobiography, arises from a filmmaking style that, because it is unafraid to risk corniness or overstatement, more often than not achieves a gruff, vulgar lyricism.
This version also allows you to appreciate Fuller's ability to give his chaotic raw material a sense of pattern and shape. As the soldiers trundle from one hair-raising battle to the next, pausing to take in the blasted scenery and human devastation that surrounds them, themes and motifs present themselves. You notice the repeated appearance of children, who are drawn to the taciturn Sergeant and who illuminate a tender side of his personality that he himself might not acknowledge. The narrative occasionally crosses over to the enemy side, to follow the progress of a German officer named Schroeder, who is the Sergeant's negative mirror image. Their similarities suggest that, in war, the distinction between heroism and villainy is so faint as to be nearly invisible.
The moral of the story - introduced as "fictional life based on factual death" - is that "the only glory in war is surviving." In both of these statements, the emphasis falls, almost in spite of itself, on life. And "The Big Red One," for all its uncompromising brutality, is viscerally, angrily alive. Fuller was lucky to survive the war. It is our good fortune that this film, a tribute to his luck (and to those who did not share it), has come back to life.
THE BIG RED ONE
The Reconstruction
Written and directed by Samuel Fuller; director of photography, Adam Greenberg; original edited by Morton Tubor, restoration edited by Bryan McKenzie; music by Dana Kaproff; originally produced by Gene Corman, restoration produced by Richard Schickel; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes. This film is rated PG. Shown today at 11 a.m. at Alice Tully Hall, at Lincoln Center, 1941 Broadway, at 65th Street, as part of the 42nd New York Film Festival.
WITH: Lee Marvin (Sergeant), Mark Hamill (Griff), Robert Carradine (Zab), Bobby Di Cicco (Vinci), Kelly Ward (Johnson), Siegfried Rauch (Schroeder), Stéphane Audran (Walloon), Serge Marquand (Rensonnet), Charles Macauley (General/Captain), Alain Doutey (Broban), Maurice Marsac (Vichy Colonel), Colin Gilbert (Dog Face P.O.W.), Joseph Clark (Shep), Ken Campbell (Lemchek), Doug Werner (Switolski), Perry Lang (Kaiser), Howard Delman (Smitty) and Marthe Villalonga (Madame Marbaise)."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080437/board/nest/12211889
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080437/board/nest/7078234
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 2, 2004
In late 1941, just after Pearl Harbor, Samuel Fuller, like thousands of other young men, enlisted in the United States Army. At 29 Fuller was already a hardened reporter, a budding pulp novelist and an aspiring filmmaker, and while his reasons for joining up were as patriotic as the next guy's, he also had something of an ulterior motive.
As he put it later in his memoirs, in characteristically hardboiled style, "I had a helluva opportunity to witness the biggest crime story of the century, and nothing was going to stop me from being an eyewitness."
Over the next four years, from North Africa to Sicily and from Omaha Beach to the Folkenau concentration camp, in what is now the Czech Republic, Fuller witnessed atrocities and absurdities beyond anything he could have anticipated. When it was all over, he went on to write and direct his share of crime stories ("Pickup on South Street" and "Underworld U.S.A.", among others), and a few combat pictures as well. But through it all he nursed the ambition to turn his experiences into a dogface epic, to be called "The Big Red One" in honor of the storied First Infantry Division, in which he had served.
This weekend, seven years after Fuller's death, 24 years after its initial, botched release, and almost 60 years after V-E day, "The Big Red One" is finally here, in a form close to what Fuller intended. It's better late than never, and better than just about anything else to hit screens this year.
Fuller tried to make the movie in the late 1950's, but the project never got off the ground, partly because the studio insisted, against Fuller's wishes, that John Wayne be the star. Finally, in 1979, Fuller shot his magnum opus independently, on a tight budget in Israel and Ireland with Lee Marvin and a cast of young up-and-comers, including Robert Carradine and Mark Hamill (then and now best known as Luke Skywalker).
According to legend, the director presented a four-and-a-half-hour cut to Warner Brothers, which the studio (with Fuller's acquiescence) chopped to 113 minutes and released in 1980. It was an interesting, uneven movie. In those days of "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now", it probably also seemed more than a little dated - an old geezer telling war stories that nobody wanted to hear anymore.
Well, gather round, kids. Today and tomorrow, at the New York Film Festival, an expanded version of "The Big Red One" will be shown, before making its way to theaters in the next months, and then to DVD. Thanks to the efforts of the film critic and historian Richard Schickel and others, more than 40 minutes have been added to the original release. The result is a messy, muscular masterpiece.
In its newer, more capacious form, "The Big Red One" is a grand three-part chronicle of four young soldiers (one of whom looks a lot like the young Fuller) and their leathery, unnamed Sergeant, in North Africa, in Italy and then in Northern Europe. Each segment is composed of rough, vivid vignettes, some comprising only a handful of shots, which combine horror, humor and the tough, fatalistic humanism that was Fuller's trademark.
It is tempting, at this point, to lapse into breathless summary: the movie is full of the kind of scenes you can't wait to rush outside and tell someone about, if only to confirm that you really witnessed them. A Belgian woman gives birth on the floor of a tank; a ruthless Nazi sniper turns out to be a 10-year-old boy who is punished with a spanking from the Sergeant; a louche German orderly at a field hospital in Tunis kisses Lee Marvin on the mouth; Stéphane Audran, feigning madness, dances through an insane asylum occupied by the Nazis, quietly cutting German throats with a straight razor. I could go on and on, but you have to see it for yourself. The blunt, haunting power of these scenes, many of which also turn up in Fuller's autobiography, arises from a filmmaking style that, because it is unafraid to risk corniness or overstatement, more often than not achieves a gruff, vulgar lyricism.
This version also allows you to appreciate Fuller's ability to give his chaotic raw material a sense of pattern and shape. As the soldiers trundle from one hair-raising battle to the next, pausing to take in the blasted scenery and human devastation that surrounds them, themes and motifs present themselves. You notice the repeated appearance of children, who are drawn to the taciturn Sergeant and who illuminate a tender side of his personality that he himself might not acknowledge. The narrative occasionally crosses over to the enemy side, to follow the progress of a German officer named Schroeder, who is the Sergeant's negative mirror image. Their similarities suggest that, in war, the distinction between heroism and villainy is so faint as to be nearly invisible.
The moral of the story - introduced as "fictional life based on factual death" - is that "the only glory in war is surviving." In both of these statements, the emphasis falls, almost in spite of itself, on life. And "The Big Red One," for all its uncompromising brutality, is viscerally, angrily alive. Fuller was lucky to survive the war. It is our good fortune that this film, a tribute to his luck (and to those who did not share it), has come back to life.
THE BIG RED ONE
The Reconstruction
Written and directed by Samuel Fuller; director of photography, Adam Greenberg; original edited by Morton Tubor, restoration edited by Bryan McKenzie; music by Dana Kaproff; originally produced by Gene Corman, restoration produced by Richard Schickel; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes. This film is rated PG. Shown today at 11 a.m. at Alice Tully Hall, at Lincoln Center, 1941 Broadway, at 65th Street, as part of the 42nd New York Film Festival.
WITH: Lee Marvin (Sergeant), Mark Hamill (Griff), Robert Carradine (Zab), Bobby Di Cicco (Vinci), Kelly Ward (Johnson), Siegfried Rauch (Schroeder), Stéphane Audran (Walloon), Serge Marquand (Rensonnet), Charles Macauley (General/Captain), Alain Doutey (Broban), Maurice Marsac (Vichy Colonel), Colin Gilbert (Dog Face P.O.W.), Joseph Clark (Shep), Ken Campbell (Lemchek), Doug Werner (Switolski), Perry Lang (Kaiser), Howard Delman (Smitty) and Marthe Villalonga (Madame Marbaise)."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080437/board/nest/12211889
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080437/board/nest/7078234
11-20-04, 05:23 PM
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The DVD that is out now is the reconstructed version.. available for about $5 at DDD. I haven't seen it but I picked it up after reading good things by Rosenbaum and Slant (also Marvin fan). For $5 seems good to me.
