DWIGHT MACDONALD
443
brook in
Commonweal.
"In the mov ie, he [Beatty
1
is the same kind of
tongue-tied numbskull he played in
Shampoo."
It
takes mo re sel f–
di scipline tha n Beatty has to pl ay a nd direct himsel f successfull y . H e
indul ges himself gross ly. T here's a repeated se ries of co rny sight
gags: the dog tha t sc ratches a t the door whenever J ack and Louise
Bryant a re making love, J ack's bumping hi s head on the chandelier,
etc. As P auline Kae l sums it up in he r j ud icious rev iew in the
New
Yorker:
"The same instincti ve showma nship that robs Beatty's per–
forma nce of force robs the mov ie of conten t. Wha tever he sta rted ou t
to make the picture fo r, he has replaced it with stale gags and bits of
business he thinks will work wi th a n audience."
Some critics have pra ised Beatty fo r the ambitious scope of
Reds -
no t many Pa ramount-fin anced movies have such as pira tions.
But , whil e I agreed with Pres ident H oove r tha t prohibi tion was "an
experiment noble in purpose," tha t didn't make me admire it. So too
in art: good inten tions grow like bl ackberries but your pa il isn't fill ed
until they're picked .
There's an earl y gli mpse of R eed climbing into one of Pa ncho
Villa's wagons - he reported Pershing's punitive expedition - but it's
so brief as to be sublimina l.
It
is typical of Beatty's los t opportuniti es
for the acti on tha t a n epic film needs, whether E isenstein's
October
or
Dav id Lean's
Lawrence oj Arabia.
Reds'
chie f di storti on of hi stori cal reality as well as one of its
maj or de fects is its port ra it of R eed's wife, Loui se Bryant. Dia ne
Keaton is a good ac tress but this role defeats her by its inconsistency.
She's like a chameleon on a Scotch pla id , ve ry uncerta in .
Bryant is shown as a muddleheaded , pretenti ous feminist who
never knows the sco re politically, is mute ·a t the men's discussions
(and whines about it), a nd is expert a t nothing except ball-cutting .
How two men like R eed and Euge ne O 'Ne ill could be a ttrac ted by
her is a mys tery. And would the Loui se of the first ha lf become the
Louise of the ending who makes a da nge rous trip to Russ ia with her
husband ? Rhetori cal ques ti on .
The real Loui se was the equal of R eed and O 'Neill and it's not
strange they became her love rs. She was a professiona l j ourna list,
and her a rticles on the 1917 revolutio n were syndicated widely, a nd
she was no t fired by the syndi cate as the mov ie cl a ims . (Does Beatty
have an antifemini st subconscious?) "When Bryant a nd R eed first
met in 1916 ," Laura Co ttingham writes in the
Soho News,
"Louise was
an editor for the Portl a nd weekl y
Spectator
and a frequent contributor
