april 7, 2009 (xviii:12) warren beatty, r (1981, 194 min)csac.buffalo.edu/reds.pdf · april 7, 2009...

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April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, REDS (1981, 194 min) Directed by...Warren Beatty Produced by...Warren Beatty Screenplay….Warren Beatty, Trevor Griffiths and (uncredited): Elaine May, Jeremy Pikser, Peter S. Feibleman Music by...Stephen Sondheim and Dave Grusin Cinematography...Vittorio Storaro Editing by...Dede Allen and Craig McKay Warren Beatty...John "Jack" Silas 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 George Plimpton...Horace Whigham Gene Hackman...Pete Van Wherry THE WITNESSES: Jacob Bailin, Roger Nash Baldwin (founder of the ACLU), John Ballato, Harry Carlisle, Kenneth Chamberlain, Andrew Dasburg, Tess Davis, Will Durant (Philosopher, historian, and writer), Hamilton Fish III (congressman), Adele Gutman Nathan, Blanche Hays Fagen, Dorothy Frooks (author, publisher, military figure and actress), Hugo Gellert (illustrator and satirist), Emmanuel Herbert, George Jessel (actor, singer, songwriter, and movie producer), Isaac Don Levine, Arthur Mayer, Henry Miller (writer), Scott Nearing (conservationist, peace activist, educator and writer), Adela Rogers St. Johns (journalist, novelist, and screenwriter), Dora Russell (feminist and progressive campaigner), George Seldes (investigative journalist and media critic), Art Shields, Jessica Smith (editor and activist), Arne Swabeck (American Communist leader), Bernadine Szold-Fritz Galina von Meck, Heaton Vorse, Will Weinstone, Rebecca West (Feminist and writer), Lucita Williams Oscar wins: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Maureen Stapleton playing Emma Goldman), Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro) Best Director (Warren Beatty) Oscar nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Warren Beatty), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Diane Keaton), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Richard Sylbert, Michael Seirton), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Warren Beatty (March 30, 1937, Richmond, Virginia) has 29 acting, 6 writing and 4 directing credits. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2000 and Oscar nominations for best screenplay (Bulworth 1998), best actor (Bugsy 1991), best picture Bugsy 1991), best director (Reds 1981, won), best actor in a leading role (Reds (1981), best picture (Reds 1981), best screenplay (Reds 1981), best actor (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best director (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best picture (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best screenplay based on another medium (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best screenplay Shampoo 1975), best actor in a leading role (Bonnie and Clyde 1967) and best picture Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Some of the other films in which he appeared are Town & Country (2001), Dick Tracy (1990), Ishtar (1987), Shampoo (1975), The Parallax View (1974), $ (1971), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Promise Her Anything (1965), Mickey One (1965), Lilith (1964), All Fall Down (1962), The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), and Splendor in the Grass (1961). Diane Keaton (January 5, 1946, Los Angeles, California) has 55 acting and 9 directing credits. She has four best actress nominations, one of which she won: Something's Gotta Give (2003), Marvin's Room (1996), Reds (1981), and Annie Hall (1977,

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Page 1: April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, R (1981, 194 min)csac.buffalo.edu/reds.pdf · April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, REDS (1981, 194 min) ... Music by...Stephen Sondheim

April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, REDS (1981, 194 min)

Directed by...Warren Beatty Produced by...Warren Beatty Screenplay….Warren Beatty, Trevor Griffiths and (uncredited): Elaine May, Jeremy Pikser, Peter S. Feibleman Music by...Stephen Sondheim and Dave Grusin Cinematography...Vittorio Storaro Editing by...Dede Allen and Craig McKay Warren Beatty...John "Jack" Silas 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 George Plimpton...Horace Whigham Gene Hackman...Pete Van Wherry THE WITNESSES: Jacob Bailin, Roger Nash Baldwin (founder of the ACLU), John Ballato, Harry Carlisle, Kenneth Chamberlain, Andrew Dasburg, Tess Davis, Will Durant (Philosopher, historian, and writer), Hamilton Fish III (congressman), Adele Gutman Nathan, Blanche Hays Fagen, Dorothy Frooks (author, publisher, military figure and actress), Hugo Gellert (illustrator and satirist), Emmanuel Herbert, George Jessel (actor, singer, songwriter, and movie producer), Isaac Don Levine, Arthur Mayer, Henry Miller (writer), Scott Nearing (conservationist, peace activist, educator and writer), Adela Rogers St. Johns (journalist, novelist, and screenwriter), Dora Russell (feminist and progressive campaigner), George Seldes (investigative journalist and media critic), Art Shields, Jessica Smith (editor and activist), Arne Swabeck (American Communist leader), Bernadine Szold-Fritz Galina von Meck, Heaton Vorse, Will Weinstone, Rebecca West (Feminist and writer), Lucita Williams Oscar wins: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Maureen Stapleton playing Emma Goldman), Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro) Best Director (Warren Beatty) Oscar nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Warren Beatty), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Nicholson), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Diane Keaton), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Richard Sylbert, Michael Seirton), Best Costume

Design, Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Warren Beatty (March 30, 1937, Richmond, Virginia) has 29 acting, 6 writing and 4 directing credits. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2000 and Oscar nominations for best screenplay (Bulworth 1998), best actor (Bugsy 1991), best picture Bugsy 1991), best director (Reds 1981, won), best actor in a leading role (Reds (1981), best picture (Reds 1981), best screenplay (Reds 1981), best actor (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best director (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best picture (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best screenplay based on another medium (Heaven Can Wait 1978), best screenplay Shampoo 1975), best actor in a leading role (Bonnie and Clyde 1967) and best picture Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Some of the other films in which he appeared are Town & Country (2001), Dick Tracy (1990), Ishtar (1987), Shampoo (1975), The Parallax View (1974), $ (1971), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Promise Her Anything (1965), Mickey One (1965), Lilith (1964), All Fall Down (1962), The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), and Splendor in the Grass (1961). Diane Keaton (January 5, 1946, Los Angeles, California) has 55 acting and 9 directing credits. She has four best actress nominations, one of which she won: Something's Gotta Give (2003), Marvin's Room (1996), Reds (1981), and Annie Hall (1977,

Page 2: April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, R (1981, 194 min)csac.buffalo.edu/reds.pdf · April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, REDS (1981, 194 min) ... Music by...Stephen Sondheim

Warren Beatty, REDS—2 won). Some of her other films are Mad Money (2008), Smother (2008), Mama's Boy (2007), Because I Said So (2007), The Family Stone (2005), Terminal Impact (2005), Town & Country (2001), Hanging Up (2000), Marvin's Room (1996), The First Wives Club (1996), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Father of the Bride (1991), The Godfather: Part III (1990), The Lemon Sisters (1990), Radio Days (1987), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Mrs. Soffel (1984), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Shoot the Moon (1982), Manhattan (1979), Interiors (1978), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976), I Will, I Will... for Now (1976), Love and Death (1975), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Sleeper (1973), Play It Again, Sam (1972), The Godfather (1972), and Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). Edward Herrmann (July 21, 1943, District of Columbia, USA) has 104 acting credits, some of which are “30 Rock” (2008), “Grey’s Anatomy” (2007), “Gilmore Girls” (2000-2007), I Think I Love My Wife (2007), Factory Girl (2006), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), “Oz” (2000-2003), The Emperor's Club (2002), “The Practice” (1997-2001), “Homicide: Life on the Street” (1996), Nixon (1995), Born Yesterday (1993), Hero (1992), Overboard (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), Compromising Positions (1985), The Man with One Red Shoe (1985), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Mrs. Soffel (1984), Annie (1982), Reds (1981), Harry's War (1981), Brass Target (1978), The Betsy (1978), A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1978), Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977), Eleanor and Franklin (1976), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), The Great Gatsby (1974), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), and The Paper Chase (1973). Jack Nicholson (April 22, 1937, Neptune, New Jersey) has 71 acting credits. He was nominated for a best actor Oscar for About Schmidt (2002), won a best actor Oscar for As Good as It Gets (1997), was nominated for best supporting actor in A Few Good Men (1992), best actor in Ironweed (1987) and Prizzi's Honor (1985), won best supporting actor for Terms of Endearment (1983), nominated best supporting actor for Reds (1981), won best actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), nominated for best actor in Chinatown (1974), The Last Detail (1973) and Five Easy Pieces (1970), and best supporting actor for Easy Rider (1969). Some of his other memorable roles were in The Bucket List (2007), The Departed (2006), Batman (1989), Broadcast News (1987), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Heartburn (1986), Terms of Endearment (1983), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), The Shining (1980), Goin' South (1978), Professione: reporter/The Passenger (1975), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), The Shooting (1967), Ride in the Whirlwind (1965), The Raven (1963), The Terror (1963), and as the masochist dental patient in the original The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). Paul Sorvino (April 13, 1939, Brooklyn, New York) has 115 acting credits, some of which are Carnera: The Walking Mountain (2008), Mr. Fix It (2006), “That's Life” (2000-2005), The Cooler (2003), Longshot (2000), Bulworth (1998), Most Wanted (1997), Nixon (1995), “Law & Order” (1991-1992), Goodfellas (1990), Dick Tracy (1990), That Championship Season (1982), I, the Jury (1982), Reds (1981), Cruising (1980), The Brink's Job (1978), Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978), I Will, I Will... for Now (1976), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), A Touch of Class (1973), and The Panic in Needle Park (1971).

Maureen Stapleton (June 21, 1925, Troy, New York—March 13, 2006, Lenox, Massachusetts; chronic pulmonary disease) has 73 acting credits. She won a best supporting actress Oscar for Reds (1981) and was nominated for Interiors (1978), Airport (1970) and Lonelyhearts (1958). Some of her other films were Living and Dining (2003), Wilbur Falls (1998), The Last Good Time (1994), Cocoon: The Return (1988), Doin’ Time on Planet Earth (1988), Heartburn (1986), Cocoon (1985), Johnny Dangerously (1984), The Fan (1981), The Runner Stumbles (1979), Plaza Suite (1971), and Bye Bye Birdie (1963). Gene Hackman (January 30, 1930, San Bernardino, California) has 99 acting credits. In 2002, he won the AFI Film Aware for Featured Actor of the Year for The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). He won a best supporting actor Oscar for Unforgiven (1992), was nominated for best actor Oscar for Mississippi Burning (1988), won a best actor Oscar for The French Connection (1971), and was nominated for best supporting actor Oscars for I Never Sang for My Father (1970) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Some of his other films are Welcome to Mooseport (2004), Runaway Jury (2003), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Under Suspicion (2000), Enemy of the State (1998), Absolute Power (1997), The Chamber (1996), Extreme Measures (1996), Get Shorty (1995), Crimson Tide (1995), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Wyatt Earp (1994), Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), The Firm (1993), Class Action (1991), Postcards from the Edge (1990), Another Woman (1988), Bat*21 (1988), No Way Out (1987), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Hoosiers (1986), Uncommon Valor (1983), Under Fire (1983), Reds (1981), Superman II (1980), Superman (1978), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Bite the Bullet (1975), Night Moves (1975), French Connection II (1975), Young Frankenstein (1974), The Conversation (1974), Scarecrow (1973), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Prime Cut (1972), Cisco Pike (1972), The Hunting Party (1971), I Never Sang for My Father (1970), Marooned (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), and The Gypsy Moths (1969). Vittorio Storaro (June 24, 1940, Rome, Italy) has 57 cinematography credits. He won best cinematographer Oscars for The Last Emperor (1987), Reds (1981) and Apocalypse Now (1979). Some of his other films were Io, Don Giovanni (2009), L’Imbroglio nel lenzuolo (2008), Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005), Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), Zapata - El sueño del héroe (2004), Picking Up the Pieces (2000), Goya en Burdeos/Goya in Bordeaux (1999), Tango (1998), Bulworth (1998), Taxi (1996), Little Buddha (1993), Tosca (1992), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Dick Tracy (1990), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Ishtar (1987), One from the Heart (1982), La Luna (1979), Agatha (1979), Novecento/1900 (1976), Giordano Bruno (1973), Malizia/Malicious (1973), Ultimo tango a Parigi/Last Tango in Paris (1972), Il Conformista/The Conformist (1970), L’Urlo/The Scream (1966), I Normanni/Conquest of the Normans (1962) Dede Allen (December 3, 1925, Cleveland, Ohio) has 31 editing credits. She received three best editing Oscar nominations: Wonder Boys (2000), Reds (1981), and Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Some of the other films she edited were Fireflies in the Garden (2008), Have Dreams, Will Travel (2007), John Q (2002), The Addams Family (1991), Henry & June (1990), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), The Breakfast Club (1985), The Wiz (1978), Slap Shot (1977), The Missouri Breaks (1976), Night Moves (1975), Serpico

Page 3: April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, R (1981, 194 min)csac.buffalo.edu/reds.pdf · April 7, 2009 (XVIII:12) Warren Beatty, REDS (1981, 194 min) ... Music by...Stephen Sondheim

Warren Beatty—REDS—3 (1973), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), Little Big Man (1970), Alice's Restaurant (1969), Rachel, Rachel (1968), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), America, America (1963), The Hustler (1961), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Craig McKay has 40 editing credits, some of which are Life in Flight (2008), Awake (2007), Carriers (2007), Surviving Christmas (2004), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), Blue Moon (2000), Cop Land (1997), Murder Incorporated (1995), Philadelphia (1993), Mad Dog and Glory (1993), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), She-Devil (1989), Married to the Mob (1988), Something Wild (1986), Swing Shift (1984), Reds (1981), Melvin and Howard (1980), “Holocaust” (1978), Thieves (1977), Free to Be... You & Me (1974). He was nominated for two best editing Oscars—The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Reds (1981).

Roger Ebert’s Movie Home Companion 1990 Edition. Roger Ebert. Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City/NY, 1989. “Reds”. The original John Reed was a dashing young man from Portland who knew a good story when he found one, and, when he found himself in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution, wrote a book called Ten Days that Shook the World and made himself a famous journalist. He never quite got it right again after that. He became embroiled in the American left-wing politics of the 1920s, participated in fights between factions of the Socialist Party and the new American Communist Party, and finally returned to Moscow on a series of noble fool’s errands that led up, one way or another, to his death from tuberculosis [sic. spotted typhus] and kidney failure in a Russian hospital. He is the only American buried within the Kremlin walls. That is Reeds’ story in a nutshell. But if you look more deeply you find a man who was more than a political creature. He was also a man who wanted to be where the action was, a radical young intellectual who was in the middle of everything in the years after world War I, when Greenwich Village was in a creative ferment and American society seemed, for a brief moment, to be overturning itself. It is that personal , human John Reed that Warren Beatty’s Reds takes as its subject, although there is a lot, and maybe too much, of the political John Reed as well. The movie never succeeds in convincing us that the feuds between the American socialist parties were much more than personality conflicts and ego-bruisings, so audiences can hardly be expected to care which faction is “the” American party of the left. What audiences can, and possibly will, care about, however, is a traditional Hollywood romantic epic, a love story written on the canvas of history, as they used to say in the ads. And Reds provides that with glorious romanticism, surprising intelligence, and a consistent wit. It is the thinking man’s Dr. Zhivago, told

from the other side, of course. The love story stars Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, who might seem just a tad unlikely as casting choices, but who are immediately engaging and then grow into solid, plausible people on the screen. Keaton is a particular surprise. I had somehow gotten into the habit of expecting her to be a touchy New Yorker, sweet, scared, and intellectual. Here, as a Portland dentist’s wife who runs away with John Reed and eventually follows him halfway around the world, through blizzards and prisons and across ice steppes, she is just what she needs to be: plucky, healthy, exasperated, loyal, and funny. Beatty, as John Reed, is also surprising. I expected him to play Reed as a serious, noble, heroic man for all seasons, and so he does, sometimes. But there is in Warren Beatty’s screen persona a persistent irony, a way of kidding his own seriousness, that takes the edge off a potentially pretentious character and makes him into one of God’s fools. Beatty plays Reed but does not beatify him: he permits the silliness and boyishness to co-exist with the self-conscious historical mission. The action in the movie takes Reed to Russia and back again to Portland, and off again with Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), and then there is a lengthy pause in Greenwich Village and time enough for Louise to have a sad little love affair with the morosely alcoholic playwright Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson). Then there are other missions to Moscow, and heated political debates in New York basements, and at one point I’m afraid I entirely lost track of exactly why Reed was running behind a horsecart in the middle of some forgotten battle in an obscure backwater of the Russian empire. The fact is, Reed’s motivation from moment to moment is not the point of the picture. The point is that a revolution is happening, human societies are being swept aside, a new class is in control—or so it seems—and for an insatiably curious young man, that is exhilarating and it is enough. The heart of the film is in the relationship between Reed and Bryant. There is an interesting attempt to consider her problems as well as his. she leaves Portland because she is sick unto death of small talk. She wants to get involved in politics, in art, in what’s happening: She is so inexorably drawn to Greenwich Village that if Reed had not taken her there, she might have gone on her own. If she was a radical in Portland, however, she is an Oregonian in the Village, and she cannot compete conversationally with such experienced fast-talkers as the anarchist Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton). In fact, no one seems to listen to her or pay her much heed, except for sad Eugene O’Neill, who is brave enough to love her but not smart enough to keep it to himself. The ways in which she edges toward O’Neill, and then loyally returns to Reed, create an emotional density around her character that makes it really mean something when she and Reed embrace at last in a wonderful tear-jerking scene in the Russian train station. The whole movie finally comes down to the fact that the characters matter to us. Beatty may be fascinated by the ins and outs of American left-wing politics sixty years ago, but he is not so idealistic as to believe an American mass audience can be inspired to care as deeply. So he gives us people. And they are seen here with such warmth and affection that we sense new dimensions not only in Beatty and Keaton, but especially in Nicholson. In Reds, understating his desire, apologizing for his passion, hanging around Louise, handing her a poem, throwing her out of his life, he is quieter but much more passionate than in the overwrought The Postman Always Rings Twice. As for Beatty, Reds is his bravura turn. He got the idea, nurtured it for a decade, found the financing, wrote most of the script, produced, and directed and starred and still found enough

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Warren Beatty, REDS—4 artistic detachment to make his Reed into a flawed, fascinating enigma instead of a boring archetypal hero. I liked this movie, I felt a real fondness for it. It was quite a subject to spring on the capitalist Hollywood movie system, and maybe only Beatty could have raised $35 million to make a movie about a man who hated millionaires. I noticed, here at the end of the credits, a wonderful line that reads: Copyright © MCMLXXXI Barclays Mercantile Industrial Finance Limited. John Reed would have loved that.

from 1001 Movies You Must See before You Die. Steven Jay Schneider Gen, Editor. Barron’s, London, 2005. Entry by R. Barton Palmer. Reds, despite its concession to entertainment cinema, is arguably Hollywood’s most effective presentation of politics and ideological conflict in 20th-century America.

John Reed (1887-1920) from books and writers: American journalist and poet-adventurer, whose colorful life as a revolutionary writer ended in Russia but made him the hero of a generation of radical intellectuals. Reed was a close friend of V.I. Lenin and an eyewitness to the 1917 October revolution. He recorded this historical event in his best-known book, TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (1920). Reed is buried

with other Bolshevik heroes beside the Kremlin wall. "It was just 8.40 when a thundering wave of cheers announced the entrance of the presidium, with Lenin-great Lenin-among them. A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down in his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth, and heavy chin; clean-shaven now, but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader-a leader purely by virtue of intellect; colourless, humourless, uncompromising and detached, without picturesque idiosyncrasies-but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms, of analysing a concrete situation. And combined with shrewdness, the greatest intellectual audacity." (from Ten Days That Shook the World) John Silas Reed was born in Portland Oregon into a wealthy family. His father, Charles Jerome Reed, was a businessman, socially active and admired Theodore Roosevelt. At college Reed joined the swimming team and the dramatics club. He served on the editorial board of the Harvard Monthly and Lampoon, and was class orator and poet. After graduating from Harvard in 1910, Reed travelled in England and Spain. Upon his return to America Reed started his career as a journalist in the leftist magazines. He was one of the leading socialists of the New Review and The Masses. Van Wyck Brooks called him in The Confident Years "the wonder boy of Greenwich Village." Later Reed appeared in Max Eastman's novel Venture (1927) as Jo Hancock, a young man in love with life. During this time Reed made close friends with Mabel Dodge, the rich hostess, who ran her salon at 23 Fifth Avenue. She helped organize the 1913 Armory Show, which brought Cubism to

New York. In 1913 Reed published his first book, SANGAR, a collection of poems. He was arrested for trying to speak for striking silk worker in Paterson, New Jersey. Reed spent four days in a jail. He then wrote 'The Pageant of the Paterson Strike', which was enacted at Madison Square Garden, as a benefit to aid the workers. In the following years Reed was arrested several times for organizing strikes. In the early 1910s Reed went to Mexico to cover the Mexican revolution for the Metropolitan Magazine and the New York World. He spent four months with Pancho Villa and his troops and described the revolutionary fighting in INSURGENT MEXICO (1914). During World War I Reed worked as a war correspondent for the Metropolitan Magazine, where some of his stories were rejected on the basis of leftist sympathies. Reed's reports on the fighting in Germany, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia were published in THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE (1916). All what he saw, depressed him there was no revolutionary enthusiasm. Reed was forced to return to the United States for an operation that removed one of his kidneys. In 1916 Reed supported Woodrow Wilson and warned about dark forces that want to plunge the country into war. His fears came true: Wilson declared war on Germany. In early 1917 Reed married the journalist Louise Bryant; they had met a few years earlier at a dinner party. At that time Louise was married to Paul Trullinger, a successful dentist and an amateur painter. Reed was one of the best paid reporters in the U.S. but his idea to travel to Russia was received lukewarmly. With the help of Max Eastman and some other friends he managed to get enough money. In the autumn he started with Bryant his journey to St. Petersburg to witness and report on the revolution for The Masses. Reed was not an impartial observer. He identified himself with Bolsheviks and his pro-Communist and anti-war articles were partly responsible for that journal's indictment and trials on the grounds of sedition. In St. Petersburg Reed began one of his most ambitious poems, 'America', 1918, which was inspired by Walt Whitman. In it personal subject matters blended with his vision of America, "my country, my America." During this period Reed became active in politics. He started to write in 1919 for The New Communist edited the Voice of Labour. In the summer he participated in Chicago in the meeting of the Socialist Party of America. It ended in chaos, and as a result, two Communist parties were born. Reed himself became the leader of Communist Labor Party. To secure the status of the party, Read realized that it should recognized as soon as possible by Comintern (Communist International), also known as the Third International. Reed was sent to Russia. In autumn he crossed Gulf of Finland on a ship, hiding in a sort of iron shaft, arrived at Turku, and continued to Helsinki. Through the contacts of the writer and businesswoman Hella Wuolijoki he met Lydia Stahl, who was later arrested in France as a Russian spy. At this time she was close to Otto Ville Kuusinen, a Finnish Communist working underground. Stahl and Reed

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Warren Beatty—REDS—5 continued correspondence until his death. Reed had visited Finland briefly in 1917 and 1918, but when he returned in 1919, the Finnish authorities had started to contol more tightly the border and followed movements of emigrants and revolutionaries. In November Reed was in Russia. He met several times Lenin at the Kremlin, and gave him Ten Days That Shook The World. He planned to get out of Russia through Latvia, but found it impossible to avoid there the battle lines between the Whites and the Reds. So he crossed again the Finnish border and tried to use "the traditional Bolshevik coalbox route", but this time the adventures ended in Turku, on a ship, where he was found hiding in the well-known coalbox. After being arrested he was taken to a shower. With him Reed carried 102 diamonds, a large sum of money, and letters written by Trotsky and Lenin. In Finland he was found guilty of smuggling, but also the State Department in the United States wanted him in Chicago he was suspected of "criminal anarchy". While in prison Reed wrote more poetry and outlined a pair of novels, which he never completed. He was released in June. Reed then traveled to Estonia and from there to St. Petersburg. "This is just a beginning... It's not happening the way we thought it would. It's not happening the way we wanted to, but it's happening. If you walk out of it now, what's your whole life then?" (Warren Beatty in Reds) In Russia he gave speeches and was joined by Bryant, whom he had sent letters from the prison. The three months in Turku had exhausted him mentally and physically although physical force was not used in his interrogations. In Moscow Reed was elected in the Executive Committee of the Comintern. At the peak of his career, Reed was stricken with typhus after his return from Baku. He died in Moscow on October 19, 1920. Reed's popularity as a radical leader led to the creation of John Reed clubs across the United States. His life was subject for the successful 1981 motion picture Reds. Ten Days That Shook the World focused on the crucial moment of history, when Lenin pressed the Bolsheviks to seize power. Workers, soldiers, peasants, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace. Trotsky announced the overthrow of the provisional government, and counterrevolutionary forces threatened Moscow. Reed recounts conversations and arguments, details political machinations, and speculates on personal motives. Although Reed's enthusiasm for the revolution hinders his objectivity, the book gives an unique, firsthand account of the turning point in Russian history. Louise Bryant (1885-1936) from Encyclopedia of Marxism: Louis Bryant was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. She moved to Portland when she was twenty to attend the University of Oregon. There she became active in the women's suffrage movement and began her career as a writer. She was married to a successful dentist when she met John Reed, who would become her partner and professional colleague until his early death in 1920. Shortly after meeting

they moved to New York where they associated with a group of radical journalists centered around the magazine The Masses. Bryant wrote numerous political articles, poetry and was a war correspondent in World War I. Her book Six Months in Russia made her an authority on the Russian government, its foreign policy, and socialism. The Last Days With John Reed: A Letter from Louise Bryant to Max Eastman, The Liberator, February 1921: Moscow, Nov. 14, 1920 Dear Max: I knew you would want details and a story for the Liberator — but I did not have either the strength or the courage. As it is — I will be able to write only a very incoherent letter and you may take from it what you wish. Jack’s death and my strenuous underground trip to Russia and the weeks of terror in the typhus hospital have quite broken me. At the funeral I suffered a very sever heart attack which by the merest scratch I survived. Specialists have agreed that I have strained my heart because of the long days and nights I watched beside Jack’s bed and that it is enlarged and may not get ever well again. They do not agree, however, on the time it will take for another attack. I write to you all these stupid things because I have to face them myself and because it must be part of the letter. The American and German doctors give me a year or even two, the Russians only month. I have to take stimulants and I am not in a bit of pain. I think I have better recuperative powers than they believe — but, anyway, it is a small matter. I once promised Jack that I would put all his works in order in case of his death. I will come home if I get stronger and do so. All that I write now seems part of a dream. I am in no pain at all and I find it impossible to believe that Jack is dead or that he will not come in this very room any moment. Jack was ill twenty days. Only two nights, when he was calmer, did I even lie down. Spotted typhus is beyond description, the patient wastes to nothing under your eyes. But I must go back to tell you how I found jack after my illegal journey across the world. I had to skirt Finland, sail twelve days in the Arctic ocean, hide in a fisherman’s shack four days to avoid the police with a Finnish officer and a German, both under sentence of death in their own countries. When I did reach Soviet territory I was at the opposite end of Russia from Jack. When I reached Moscow he was in Baku at the Oriental Congress. Civil war raged in the Ukraine. A military wire reached him and he came back in an armored train. On the morning of September 15th he ran shouting into my room. A month later he was dead. We had only one week together before he went to bed, and we were terribly happy to find each other. I found him older and sadder and grown strangely gentle and aesthetic. His clothes were just rags. He was so impressed with the suffering around him that he would take nothing for himself. I felt shocked and almost unable to reach the peak of fervor he had attained. The effects of the terrible experience in the Finnish gaol were all too apparent. He told me of his cell, dark and cold and wet. Almost three months of solitary confinement and only raw fish to eat. Sometimes he was delirious and imagined me dead. Sometimes he expected to die himself, so he wrote on books and everywhere a little verse: Thinking and dreaming Day and night and day

Yet cannot think one bitter thought away —

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Warren Beatty, REDS—6 That we have lost each other

You and I... But walking in the park, under the white birch trees and talking through brief, happy nights, death and separation seemed very far away. We visited together Lenin, Trotsky, Kaminev, Enver Pasha, Bela Kun, we saw the Ballet and Prince Igor and the new and old galleries. He was consumed with a desire to go home. I felt how tired and ill he was — how near a breakdown and tried to persuade him to rest. The Russians told me that he often worked twenty hours a day. Early in his sickness I asked him to promise me that he would rest before going home since it only meant going to prison. I felt prison would be too much for him. I remember he looked at me in a strange way and said, “My dear little Honey, I would do anything I could for you, but don’t ask me to be a coward.’ I had not meant it so. I felt so hurt that I burst into tears and said he could go and I would go with him anywhere by the next train, to any death or any suffering. He smiled so happily then. And all the days that followed he held me tightly by the hand. I could not leave him because he would shout for me. I have a feeling now that I have no right to be alive. Of the illness I can scarcely write — there was so much pain. I only want you all to know how he fought for his life. He would have died days before but for the fight he made. The old peasant nurses used to slip out to the Chapel and pray for him and burn a candle for his life. Even they were touched and they seem men die in agony every hour. He was never delirious in the hideous way most typhus patients are. He always knew me and his mind was full of poems and stories and beautiful thoughts. He would say, “You know how it is when you go to Venice. You ask people — Is this Venice? -just for the pleasure of hearing the reply.” He would tell me that the water he drank was full of little songs. And he related, like a child, wonderful experiences we had together and in which we were very brave. Five days before he died his right side was paralyzed. After that he could not speak. And so we watched through days and nights and days hoping against all hope. Even when he died I did not believe it. I must have been there hours afterwards still talking to him and holding his hands. And then there came a time when the body lay in state with all military honor, in the Labor temple, guarded by fourteen soldiers from the red Army. Many times I went there and saw the soldiers standing stiffly, their bayonets gleaming under the lights and the red star of Communism on their military caps. Jack lay in a long silver coffin banked with flowers and streaming banners. Once the soldiers uncovered it for me so I might touch the white forehead with my lips for the last time. On the day of the funeral we gathered in the great hall where he lay. I have very few impressions of that day. It was cold and the sky dark, snow fell as we began to march. I was conscious of how people cried and how the banners floated and how the wailing heart-breaking Revolutionary funeral hymn, played by a military band, went on forever and ever. The Russians let me take my grief in my own way, since they felt I had thrown all my caution to the winds in going to the hospital. On that day I felt very proud and even strong. I wished to walk according to the Russian custom, quite by myself after the hearse. And in the red Square I tried to stand facing the speakers

with a brave face. But I was not brave at all and fell on the ground and could not speak or cry. I do not remember the speeches. I remember more the broken notes of the speakers’ voices. I was aware that after a long time they ceased and the banners began to dip back and forth in salute. I heard the first shovel of earth go rolling down and then something snapped in my brain. After an eternity I woke up in my own bed. Emma Goldman was standing there and Berkman, and two doctors and a tall young officer from the red Army. They were whispering and I went to sleep again. But I have been in Red Square since then — since that day all those people came to bury in all honor our dear Jack Reed. I have been there in the busy afternoon when all Russia hurries by, horses and sleighs and bells and peasants carrying bundles, soldiers singing on their way to the front. Once some of the soldiers came over to the grave. They took off their hats and spoke reverently. “what a good fellow he was!” said one. “he came all the way across the world for us.” “he was one of ours” In another moment they shouldered their guns and went on again. I have been there under the stars with a great longing to lie down beside the frozen flowers and the metallic wreaths and not wake up. How easy it would be! I send greeting to all old friends. Good luck to all of you. Louise

John Reed’s preface to Ten Days That Shook the World: This book is a slice of intensified history—history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets. Naturally most of it deals with “Red Petrograd,” the capital and heart of the insurrection. But the reader must realize that what

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Warren Beatty—REDS—7 took place in Petrograd was almost exactly duplicated, with greater or lesser intensity, at different intervals of time, all over Russia. In this book, the first of several which I am writing, I must confine myself to a chronicle of those events which I myself observed and experienced, and those supported by reliable evidence; preceded by two chapters briefly outlining the background and causes of the November Revolution. I am aware that these two chapters make difficult reading, but they are essential to an understanding of what follows. Many questions will suggest themselves to the mind of the reader. What is Bolshevism? What kind of a governmental structure did the Bolsheviki set up? If the Bolsheviki championed the Constituent Assembly before the November Revolution, why did they disperse it by force of arms afterward? And if the bourgeoisie opposed the Constituent Assembly until the danger of Bolshevism became apparent, why did they champion it afterward? These and many other questions cannot be answered here. In another volume, “Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk,” I trace the course of the Revolution up to and including the German peace. There I explain the origin and functions of the Revolutionary organisations, the evolution of popular sentiment, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the structure of the Soviet state, and the course and outcome of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations…. In considering the rise of the Bolsheviki it is necessary to understand that Russian economic life and the Russian army were not disorganised on November 7th, 1917, but many months before, as the logical result of a process which began as far back as 1915. The corrupt reactionaries in control of the Tsar’s Court deliberately undertook to wreck Russia in order to make a separate peace with Germany. The lack of arms on the front, which had caused the great retreat of the summer of 1915, the lack of food in the army and in the great cities, the break-down of manufactures and transportation in 1916—all these we know now were part of a gigantic campaign of sabotage. This was halted just in time by the March Revolution. For the first few months of the new régime, in spite of the confusion incident upon a great Revolution, when one hundred and sixty millions of the world’s most oppressed peoples suddenly achieved liberty, both the internal situation and the combative power of the army actually improved. But the “honeymoon” was short. The propertied classes wanted merely a political revolution, which would take the power from the Tsar and give it to them. They wanted Russia to be a constitutional Republic, like France or the United States; or a constitutional Monarchy, like England. On the other hand, the masses of the people wanted real industrial and agrarian democracy. William English Walling, in his book, “Russia’s Message,” an account of the Revolution of 1905, describes very well the state of mind of the Russian workers, who were later to support Bolshevism almost unanimously: They (the working people) saw it was possible that even under a free Government, if it fell into the hands of other social classes, they might still continue to starve…. The Russian workman is revolutionary, but he is neither violent, dogmatic, nor unintelligent. He is ready for barricades, but he has studied them, and alone of the workers of the world he has learned about them from actual experience. He is ready and willing to fight his oppressor, the capitalist class, to a finish. But he does not ignore the existence of other classes. He merely asks that the other classes take one side or the other in the bitter conflict that draws near….

They (the workers) were all agreed that our (American) political institutions were preferable to their own, but they were not very anxious to exchange one despot for another (i.e., the capitalist class)…. The workingmen of Russia did not have themselves shot down, executed by hundreds in Moscow, Riga and Odessa, imprisoned by thousands in every Russian jail, and exiled to the deserts and the arctic regions, in exchange for the doubtful privileges of the workingmen of Goldfields and Cripple Creek…. And so developed in Russia, in the midst of a foreign war, the Social Revolution on top of the Political Revolution, culminating in the triumph of Bolshevism. Mr. A. J. Sack, director in this country of the Russian Information Bureau, which opposes the Soviet Government, has this to say in his book, “The Birth of the Russian Democracy”: The Bolsheviks organised their own cabinet, with Nicholas Lenine as Premier and Leon Trotsky—Minister of Foreign Affairs. The inevitability of their coming into power became evident almost immediately after the March Revolution. The history of the Bolsheviki, after the Revolution, is a history of their steady growth…. Foreigners, and Americans especially, frequently emphasise the “ignorance” of the Russian workers. It is true they lacked the political experience of the peoples of the West, but they were very well trained in voluntary organisation. In 1917 there were more than twelve million members of the Russian consumers’ Cooperative societies; and the Soviets themselves are a wonderful demonstration of their organising genius. Moreover, there is probably not a people in the world so well educated in Socialist theory and its practical application. William English Walling thus characterises them: The Russian working people are for the most part able to read and write. For many years the country has been in such a disturbed condition that they have had the advantage of leadership not only of intelligent individuals in their midst, but of a large part of the equally revolutionary educated class, who have turned to the working people with their ideas for the political and social regeneration of Russia…. Many writers explain their hostility to the Soviet Government by arguing that the last phase of the Russian Revolution was simply a struggle of the “respectable” elements against the brutal attacks of Bolshevism. However, it was the propertied classes, who, when they realised the growth in power of the popular revolutionary organisations, undertook to destroy them and to halt the Revolution. To this end the propertied classes finally resorted to desperate measures. In order to wreck the Kerensky Ministry and the Soviets, transportation was disorganised and internal troubles provoked; to crush the Factory-Shop Committees, plants were shut down, and fuel and raw materials diverted; to break the Army Committees at the front, capital punishment was restored and military defeat connived at. This was all excellent fuel for the Bolshevik fire. The Bolsheviki retorted by preaching the class war, and by asserting the supremacy of the Soviets. Between these two extremes, with the other factions which whole-heartedly or half-heartedly supported them, were the so-called “moderate” Socialists, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, and several smaller parties. These groups were also attacked by the propertied classes, but their power of resistance was crippled by their theories.

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Warren Beatty, REDS—8 Roughly, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries believed that Russia was not economically ripe for a social revolution—that only a political revolution was possible. According to their interpretation, the Russian masses were not educated enough to take over the power; any attempt to do so would inevitably bring on a reaction, by means of which some ruthless opportunist might restore the old régime. And so it followed that when the “moderate” Socialists were forced to assume the power, they were afraid to use it. They believed that Russia must pass through the stages of political and economic development known to Western Europe, and emerge at last, with the rest of the world, into full-fledged Socialism. Naturally, therefore, they agreed with the propertied classes that Russia must first be a parliamentary state—though with some improvements on the Western democracies. As a consequence, they insisted upon the collaboration of the propertied classes in the Government. From this it was an easy step to supporting them. The “moderate” Socialists needed the bourgeoisie. But the bourgeoisie did not need the “moderate” Socialists. So it resulted in the Socialist Ministers being obliged to give way, little by little, on their entire program, while the propertied classes grew more and more insistent. And at the end, when the Bolsheviki upset the whole hollow compromise, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries found themselves fighting on the side of the propertied classes…. In almost every country in the world to-day the same phenomenon is visible. Instead of being a destructive force, it seems to me that the Bolsheviki were the only party in Russia with a constructive program and the power to impose it on the country. If they had not succeeded to the Government when they did, there is little doubt in my mind that the armies of Imperial Germany would have been in Petrograd and Moscow in December, and Russia would again be ridden by a Tsar…. It is still fashionable, after a whole year of the Soviet Government, to speak of

the Bolshevik insurrection as an “adventure.” Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires. Already the machinery had been set up by which the land of the great estates could be distributed among the peasants. The Factory-Shop Committees and the Trade Unions were there to put into operation workers’ control of industry. In every village, town, city, district and province there were Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, prepared to assume the task of local administration. No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the Russian Revolution is one of the great events of human history, and the rise of the Bolsheviki a phenomenon of world-wide importance. Just as historians search the records for the minutest details of the story of the Paris Commune, so they will want to know what happened in Petrograd in November, 1917, the spirit which animated the people, and how the leaders looked, talked and acted. It is with this in view that I have written this book. In the struggle my sympathies were not neutral. But in telling the story of those great days I have tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth.

J. R. New York, January 1st 1919.

V.I. Lenin’s introduction to Ten Days That Shook the World: “With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed’s book, ‘Ten Days that Shook the World.’ Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed but before one can accept or reject these ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision. John Reed’s book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the universal workers’ movement.

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TWO MORE TO GO IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XVIII:

April 14 32 SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD April 21 Pedro Almodóvar ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER/TODO SOBRE MI MADRE 1999

This week in 3 x 3 @ AKAG, Thursday Evenings at the Albright-Knox, 7:30 p.m.: Yasujiro Ozu’s Banshun/Late

Spring, 1949. For more information go to http://3x3.cc …email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center

and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News