«Красные» (Reds)

1981 historical drama film epic by Warren Beatty
other films named Red

Reds is a 1981 American epic historical drama film, co written, produced, and directed by Warren Beatty, about the life and career of John Reed, the journalist and writer who chronicled the October Revolution in Russia in his 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World. Beatty stars in the lead role alongside Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill. The supporting cast includes Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosiński, Paul Sorvino, Maureen Stapleton, Gene Hackman, Ramon Bieri, Nicolas Coster, and M. Emmet Walsh. The film also features, as "witnesses", interviews with the 98 year old radical educator and peace activist Scott Nearing, author Dorothy Frooks, reporter and author George Seldes, civil liberties advocate Roger Baldwin, and the American writer Henry Miller, among others. Reds was released on December 4, 1981, to widespread critical acclaim. Beatty was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director and the film was nominated for Best Picture, but lost to Chariots of Fire. Beatty, Keaton, Nicholson, and Stapleton were nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, with Stapleton winning her category. Beatty became the third person to be nominated for Academy Awards in the categories Best Director, Actor, and, with co writer Trevor Griffiths, Original Screenplay—losing again to Chariots of Fire—for a film nominated for Best Picture. In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed "AFI's 10 Top 10"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the film community. Reds came in ninth in the epic genre.

In 1915, married journalist and suffragist Louise Bryant encounters the radical journalist John Reed for the first time at a lecture in Portland, Oregon, and is intrigued with his idealism. After meeting him for an interview on international politics that lasts an entire night, she realizes that writing has been her only escape from her frustrated existence. Inspired to leave her husband, Bryant joins Reed in Greenwich Village, New York City, and becomes acquainted with the local community of activists and artists, including anarchist and author Emma Goldman and the playwright Eugene O'Neill. Later, they move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to concentrate on their writing, becoming involved in the local theater scene. Through her writing, Bryant becomes a feminist and radical in her own right. Reed becomes involved in labor strikes with the "Reds" of the Industrial Workers of the World. Obsessed with changing the world, he grows restless and heads for St. Louis to cover the 1916 Democratic National Convention. During Reed's absence, Bryant falls into a complicated affair with O'Neill. Upon his return, Reed discovers the affair and realizes he still loves Bryant. The two marry secretly and make a home together in Croton on Hudson, New York, but still have conflicting desires. When Reed admits his own infidelities, Bryant takes a ship to Europe to work as a war correspondent. After a flare up of a kidney disorder results in him having one of them removed, Reed is warned to avoid excessive travel or stress, but he decides to take the same path as Louise and goes to Europe. Reunited as professionals, the two find their passion rekindled as they travel to Russia and are swept up in the fall of the Czarist regime and the events of the 1917 Revolution. After returning to the United States, Reed writes Ten Days That Shook the World, while Louise is called to testify in front of the Overman Committee. In order to implement the communist ideals he saw in Russia, Reed becomes active in the Socialist Party of America's new Left Wing Section. The Socialist Party soon undergoes a major political shift, with Reed and the Left Wing elected to 12 of its National Executive Committee's 15 seats, but the sitting members of the Committee prevent a takeover of the party by invalidating the election and expelling the entire Left Wing. Differing ideology among the expelled members causes them to splinter into two rival organizations, with Reed forming the Communist Labor Party of America. Anxious to establish his group as the United States' true Communist Party, Reed plans to return to Russia to secure official recognition from the Soviet Comintern. Having grown tired of the political infighting, Bryant threatens to end their relationship if he goes, but he does so anyway, promising to be home by Christmas. As it was now illegal to travel to Russia, Reed enters the country by traveling to Finland and sneaking across the border. Once there, though, he grows disillusioned with the authoritarian policies the Bolsheviks have imposed upon communist Russia. Reed attempts to leave and return to Bryant, but is imprisoned in Finland after being caught trying to cross the border. After learning of his arrest, Louise seeks the U. S. government's help in securing his release, but it refuses, as in his absence he has been indicted on charges of sedition. With no other recourse, Louise illegally travels to Finland herself, but by the time she arrives Reed has been returned to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange between the two countries. Now living in Petrograd, Reed is employed as a propagandist with the Comintern, and shares an apartment with Emma Goldman, who had been deported from the U. S. Unaware that Louise has traveled to Finland, he repeatedly tries to make contact with her by sending telegrams to New York and becomes increasingly frustrated by the lack of response. Louise makes her way to Petrograd, where she is found by Emma, who tells her Reed was sent to deliver a speech in Baku. On his return to Petrograd, the Czarist White Army attacks Reed's train. Reed manages to survive the attack and is reunited with Louise at the train station. Soon thereafter, he is admitted to the hospital, where he dies of typhus, with Louise at his side.

Beatty came across the story of John Reed in the mid 1960s. Executive producer and film editor Dede Allen remembers Beatty's mentioning making a film about Reed's life as early as 1966. Originally titled Comrades, the first script was written by Beatty in 1969, but the process stalled. In 1973, Beatty was offered the role of Reed in Sergei Bondarchuk's Soviet film production Red Bells, but declined, and felt further driven to make his own biopic about Reed to compete with the Soviet version. In 1976, Beatty found a suitable collaborator in Trevor Griffiths, who began work but was delayed by his wife's death in a plane crash. The preliminary draft of the script was finished in 1978. Beatty still had problems with it and he and Griffiths spent four and a half months fixing it. Beatty also collaborated with his friends Robert Towne, Peter Feibleman and Elaine May to continue polishing the script after shooting had begun.

When principal photography began in August 1979 the original intention was for a 15 to 16 week shoot, but it ultimately took one year. Filming took place in five different countries and at various points the crew had to wait for snow to fall in Helsinki (and other parts of Finland), which stood in for the Soviet Union, and for rain to stop in Spain. Beatty asked the Soviet government for a permit to film in Moscow but was denied. Other English locations included Frensham Ponds in Surrey, which stood in for Provincetown, the Smeaton Room of the Institution of Civil Engineers at One Great George Street for the Liberal Club meeting room in Portland, and the interior of Lancaster House for that of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Another round of filming began in 1980 in New York City, Washington D. C., and Los Angeles, including Paramount Studios. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". John Simon of the National Review wrote, "Never exactly boring, sometimes entertaining, Reds is frequently irritating and finally disappointing". Commentary published a largely negative review by Richard Grenier, who, among other things, saw the film as deliberately obscuring the protagonists' Communist politics and as exaggerating Bryant's talent and accomplishments. Conversely, in a retrospective article for Jacobin, Jim Poe called Reds "one of the greatest and most faithful depictions of revolutionary politics", praising its "light touch and brisk storytelling" for an epic, as well as its cinematography, shifts in mood and performances, in particular those of Keaton and Beatty.