Asri-unix.223
net.movies
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure
Tue Dec 15 14:57:46 1981
Reds, Ragtime
n059 1422 01 Dec 81
BC-CANBY-MOVIES ADV06 2takes
(FOR RELEASE: SUN., DEC. 6)
By VINCENT CANBY
c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service
NEW YORK - In his characteristically calm, reasoned way, Andre
Bazin, the late French critic, once wrote of a treasured piece of
literature, which had just been made into a film, that although the
film might not be the perfect equivalent to the written work, it was
really not that bad and, after all, it would serve its purpose if it
sent any filmgoers whatsoever back to read the original.
Although Bazin was the mentor of Francois Truffaut and other young,
cinema-obsessed critics who were then using the pages of Cahiers du
Cinema to launch terrorist attacks on the established French
filmmakers of the day, he himself never lost sight of the connection
of films with the other arts, and with life itself. He comprehended
the possibilities of films and did not automatically condemn them for
their limitations, which, instead, he attempted to understand.
Ridicule is easy and, in the end, it's often more self-serving than
illuminating.
Two ambitious new films, Milos Forman's ''Ragtime,'' adapted by
Michael Weller from E.L. Doctorow's kaleidoscopic novel, and Warren
Beatty's ''Reds,'' written by him and Trevor Griffiths, about the
lives and loves of John Reed and Louise Bryant in and out of
revolutionary Russia, ask for something akin to Bazin's patience and
understanding. ''Ragtime'' may not deserve it, but ''Reds'' certainly
does.
''Reds'' also deserves admiration, being the most interesting, most
flamboyant, big-budget adventure film since David Lean's ''Lawrence
of Arabia,'' as well as the first commercial American film in my
memory to have as its hero a man who - at least publicly - remained
at his death an unreconstructed, card-carrying Communist. Of course,
Reed died in 1920, at the age of 33, before the death of Lenin,
before Stalin's rise and before Trotsky's fall, when disillusion was
not yet being acknowledged except by a handful of believers,
including Emma Goldman.
It says something about the political climate in this country even
30 years after the McCarthy era that this should be noteworthy. Just
10 years ago the Sam Spiegel-Franklin Schaffner ''Nicholas and
Alexandra'' asked movie audiences to sympathize with the plight of
the poor Romanovs, who in that film were in process of being deposed
in the same upheaval that is so enthusiastically championed by John
Reed in ''Reds.''
''Ragtime'' and ''Reds'' aren't easily comparable, even though they
overlap in time (pre-World War I America) and each reflects some of
the ideas that were turning upside down the politics, economics, art
and manners at the beginning of the 20th century. Doctorow's
''Ragtime'' is a densely packed, rambunctious work of the imagination
in which historical figures like J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Emma
Goldman, Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit rub shoulders (and
sometimes more) with Doctorow's fictitious characters, creating a
comic panorama of American life in which the optimism of the 19th
century still survives, at least for a little while.
''Reds'' also is about optimism and the beginnings of disillusion.
Its center is the straightforward story of the love affair and
marriage of John Reed, the well-born, young, pre-World War I
journalist and revolutionary, and the ferociously ambitious, slightly
scatty Louise Bryant, who chucked home and husband in Portland, Ore.,
to follow Reed to Greenwich Village and her own fleeting fame as a
journalist. With Reed, Louise witnessed the 1917 Bolshevik
Revolution, out of which grew Reed's classic ''Ten Days That Shook
the World.''
''Ragtime'' was conceived as a novel, ''Reds'' as a film - a
difference that is immediately apparent in the movies made by Forman
and Beatty. Another difference is that although ''Reds'' may well
send a lot of people back to various biographies of Reed and maybe
even to ''Ten Days That Shook the World,'' ''Ragtime'' ends up in
such confusion that it's less likely to create readers than a
suspicion that the book's success must have been the result not of
its own quality but of Eastern literary-Mafia hype.
For all of Forman's and Weller's good intentions, their film
severely diminishes, flattens and oversimplifies a very complex,
revivifying novel.
Where did the movie go wrong? The short answer - and perhaps the
best - is that it went wrong when Dino De Laurentiis, the producer,
bought the film rights. It's apparent in Weller's interviews that he
was perfectly aware of the difficulties of dramatizing a novel that
depends as much on the voice of the author, in long passages of
exposition and comment, as on characters and dramatic events. Indeed,
some of the most vivid characters in the book don't actually appJBdR\@RhX@DJR\N@LRNjdJf@dJFBXXJH@Dr@^Fh^d^nX@Bf@RL@hPJr@nJdJ@^LLfhBNJXfJ`BdBhJ@Ld^Z@hPJ@BFhR^\@^L@hPJ@\^lJX\@@@@h@hPJ@DJNR\\R\N@^L@hPJ@Z^lRJX@hPJdJ@BdJ@R\HRFBhR^\f@
[email protected]@B\H ^d\@PBlJ@L^j\H@B@FR\JZBhRF@JbjRlBXJ]t to the style of the
multilayered novel. The film cuts among its various story lines with
the jaunty rhythm of its simulated, old-fashioned newsreels, which
offer brief, highly stylized glimpses of prewar America, its heroes,
politicians, celebrities, fashions, fads and commerce. Then, however,
as the film progresses, you begin to feel as if you're watching
people in a lifeboat throwing things overboard in a desperate attempt
to stay afloat.
(MORE)
nyt-12-01-81 1721est
**********
n061 1445 01 Dec 81
BC-CANBY-MOVIES ADV06 1stadd
(For release Sun Dec 6)
NYT NEW YORK: stay afloat.
I don't know whether it's worse to have read the book beforehand, or
to be aware of what characters have been dropped, what events
foreshortened or eliminated and which themes muddled, or not to have
movie is supposed to be about or, worse, what is happening at any
given moment or why.
It's unfair to speculate on the kind of movie that might have been
made by Robert Altman, who was originally set to make ''Ragtime''
from a screenplay by Doctorow. Altman (''Buffalo Bill and the
Indians,'' ''Nashville,'' ''McCabe and Mrs. Miller'' and
''M.A.S.H.'') would seem to be an ideal choice. He has a particular
feeling for the tragicomic pretensions of American life. Yet the
Czech-born-and-bred Forman (''Hair,'' ''One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Nest,'' ''Taking Off'') has the informed European's benignly
critical, amused, perpetually amazed appreciation for what this
country thinks it is, what it aspires to be and what it actually is.
What's wrong with the movie is not the talent of the people who made
it but the original material, which may well be unfilmable by anybody.
''Ragtime'' is confused but it's seldom boring. It looks great and
it has some fine performances by a huge cast of actors that includes
Howard E. Rollins, Elizabeth McGovern, Mary Steenburgen, Mandy
Patinkin, Brad Dourif, Pat O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, James Olson,
Norman Mailer, Kenneth McMillan and, in a small role that effectively
distorts the emphasis of the film, James Cagney.
Unlike ''Ragtime,'' which has as its antecedent a unique literary
work, ''Reds'' is uninhibited by anything except certain facts of
history and the the authors' imaginations. It has the freedom of
movement of something intended as popular entertainment, and it takes
its style from the passionate, sometimes selfish natures of its
protagonists, John Reed (Beatty) and Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton).
Historians as well as critics may well find a number of things to
quibble about, but more important is the way the film brings to life
the fervor of a particular time and two quite extraordinary,
larger-than-life characters who, almost innocently, stumble onto the
most momentous event in European history since the French Revolution.
Beatty, as producer, director, co-author and actor, has managed the
difficult feat of making us see Reed both as a profoundly committed
political personality and as the sort of perennial, privileged
American undergraduate who regards revolutions as opportunities for
self-expression. ''Reds'' is not to be confused with anything made by
Sergei Eisenstein, including his ''October,'' also released as ''Ten
Days That Shook the World.''
''Reds'' is, rather, a highly romantic movie with an unusual (for an
American entertainment film) sense of history. It's long but it
covers a lot of ground: Pancho Villa's campaigns in Mexico, Portland,
Ore., Greenwich Village, Provincetown, Mass., the Reeds' first trip
to Russia in 1917 and their second trip in 1920 when Reed, having
already written ''Ten Days'' and now fighting Bolshevik bureaucrats
for recognition of his party of American Communists, suddenly died of
typhus, thus to be buried in the Kremlin and to become fixed in
Soviet history as a hero.
Though historical personages (Eugene O'Neill, Max Eastman, Emma
Goldman, Trotsky, Lenin and others) pop in and out of the film with
some regularity, they never seem foolish in the way they usually do
in most entertainment films. There are no lines of dialogue to equal
''The Agony and the Ecstasy's'' famous, ''Michelangelo, are you or
are you not going to finish that ceiling?''
The screenplay is only occasionally overblown, as when Emma Goldman,
staunchly played by Maureen Stapleton, is required to articulate the
failings of the revolution in a manner to be understood by any
5-year-old. The central love story is honestly appealing, and Miss
Keaton's Louise Bryant is a complicated, fully realized character -
her best dramatic work ever.
Of key importance is Beatty's use of interviews with more than two
dozen people who were friends, contemporaries or near-contemporaries
of John Reed and Louise Bryant. Among them: Rebecca West, Henry
Miller, Adela Rogers St. John, Will Durant, Arthur Mayer, George
Seldes and George Jessel. All very old (a number actually now gone,
having died since the interviews were filmed), they gossip (''She
spent too much money on clothes''), don't quite remember (''Did they
have children? I've forgotten ...''), recall the heady days of
pre-World War I Greenwich Village and some things that don't really
have much to do with John and Louise (''... and another person who
was awfully ignorant about Russia was Beatrice Webb!'').
These recollections and ramblings, even the late Jessel's, add a
historical dimension to the film, a sort of autumnal shapeliness that
is otherwise lacking since Beatty and Griffiths resolutely refuse to
tidy things up by having Reed renounce the revolution at the end of
his life.
''Reds'' isn't perfect. It has its silly and awkward moments. Like
''Ragtime,'' it, too, leaves out characters we'd like to meet
(Lincoln Steffens, Mabel Dodge, Margaret Sanger) and compresses time
and events, but it excites the imagination. Though it's personal
rather than ideological, ''Reds'' dramatizes with great emotional
effect - better than any other entertainment film I can think of - a
remarkable period in America's intellectual development and
self-awareness.
nyt-12-01-81 1744est
**********
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