REDS: TWO VIEWS
Dwight Macdonald
REDS: EPIC TEDIUM
I've been di sappo inted in the mov ies eve r since I gave up
my
Esquire
column in 1966. Thirteen films since then have been
enj oyable:
La Cage aux FoLLes, Rosemary's Baby,
a Sovie t comedy called
something like
Moscow Laughs
(first in movie hi story to be funny) ,
Silent Movie, NashviLLe, The Philadelphia Story,
K~brick's
2001,
*
the
musical
Kiss Me Kate,
Brian de Pa lma's
Carrie,
and the two la test
films by the aging but not aged mas ter , Buiiuel :
The Phantom
oj
L iberty
(1974) a nd
That Obscure Object oj Desire
(1977 ).
So by the time I saw Wa rren Beatty's
Reds
I didn't expec t much ,
and was n't disappo inted . This des pite, or perha ps because of, its
being admired by critics as dive rse as Vincent C anby, David Denby,
and Stanl ey Kauffman ; being nomina ted for ma ny O scars and
gathering severa l; and being vo ted bes t movie of 1981 by the New
York Film Critics C ircle. Onl y las t ni ght , five months a fter
Reds
opened , I saw a line two blocks long wa iting to see it at a neigh–
borhood thea tre .
**
Reds
seems like fi ve hours, is three a nd a ha lf, and should be
under two. Its chief defects a re as follows:
To begin with , there's Beatty himself in every way - as director,
produce r, script writer, a nd actor.
'Judging by
Ten Days that Shook the World,
R eed ta lked about
politics nonstop. You couldn't shut him up ," obse rve Colin Wester-
• otably the Pan Am fli ght
to
the moon it begins with .
2001
ex pired with the death
of its only human cha racter, Hal the compu ter.
" I
had a recurrent fantasy as I passed these innocents. Suppo e I whispered
to
them: "It's lousy'" backi ng it up with some cards I must get printed up some time:
"DWIG HT MAGDO
A LD ,jzim critic."
Would ma ny have been deterred? I doubt
it. In this country, nothi ng succeeds like success .
