the vital interrelation between ment of the real socialism!
It should not detract from one's admiration of, and gramude to. Warren Beatty, the film's producer director, and author Trevor Grit fiths, that such a proiect is contradictory. The film's very are creative, and I wish briefly to indicate the major ones The central identifica tion-figure Reds is not John Reed (Beatty) but Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). The reason clear enough: the film needs introduce the spectator to political tivisim through a character external to it. However, this device blocks discussion of ideas. In her first interview with Reed cute comedy is employed to convince us that Reed, though a socialist, is also loveable: charm established at the expense of what he actually says.
Later, the political debates within American CP are mediated close-ups of Bryant looking pained and disillusignalling our own reaction is to be, undoubtedly Excerpts affirms the Bolshevik insurrection and insists on the achieve equality of the sexes and bolsters reflex convictions about the sterile, incestuous bickering of the left. Elsewhere however, particularly in the marvel lous scenes with Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson).
use Bryant to criticise complacent, jaded bourgeois cynicism about political/sexual radicalism derives force identification-figure Bryant's status While Reds backs the October Revolution exITeMey unclear about conversation with emma Goldmann (Maureen Stapleton), to voice some Trotsky's analysis of Stalinism: terms of the isolation soviets Within capitalism, and much is made of imperialism's attempt crush the regime The film portray the SUSOICIOn his life's work has been wasted.
Similarly Goldmann's flat assertion that the system work' smacks of the bourgeois jibe that socialism cannot and must Stalinist.
Because Goldmann is herself a radical (though not, of course, a Leninist)
thé revolution seems to be condemned out of its own mouth. The negative meaning is reinforced by the film's failure even hint at the existence of a left opposition Bolshevik Party: Stalinisation WATER the sup- the pression of resistance EnE bureaucracy naturally confirms a feeling that the TEVOLTON had go wrong Reds also ambiguous about socialist the West, and it is easy see how this relates to the omission the struggle between Stalinism SOMBISM one country'l and the in ternationalist left opposiReed's speech to the striking workers is explicitly internationalist, and given weight.
the same time, Louise Bryant is continual used to imply that westerr should propagandise for soviets rather than build permanent revolution (the irony is lost on the film. This is a classical Stalinist line).
WIL film's criticism, through Bryant, of the idea of the party as dispensing orders to the go workers.
The problem is that she can also be read as rejecting the need for revolutionary parties in the West is just possible to read Reds as a big, romantic adventure movie which to is left, at the end, with the female eat love' self-sacrifice) the only antidote political despair. to Bourgeois journalists have dredged up comparisons with Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago preserve their liberalism.
During the revolution sequence. with the Internationale blazing on une soundtrack, the film inter cuts shots of the festival of Streets with shots of Reed ODOTESSEE and Bryant making love for the first time since their relationship broken dOWn over Bryant's demands for sexual and professional dependence.
But the intended implication is clear enough: Reds leaves us with a cou ple whose achieved, after long and painful struggle, through a mutual commitment to socialism.
The value of audacities such as this was brought home to me very movingly by the reaction of the two land as for to Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in Reds CUMENCE which saw the film this Christmas in Toronto. On both occa sions, the sequence I have just described was receivOther
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THE VERY existence of Reds is astonishing. Here is a Hollywood movie, funded (to the tune of forty million dollars) by a subsidiary of Gulf Oil, which attributes heroic status to the and struggles of a revolutionary socialist,
the revolution's degenera- tion. Reed is allowed,
obsessive, and born of his personal need to reject