DWIGHT MACDONALD
445
R eds
has popped up everywhe re, eve n in the White House .
The re was some sni cke ring-did the Preside nt think it was the Cin–
cinnati R eds ? - but , as Willi am F. Buckley, Jr. explained in his
column : "The story has it tha t whe n the movie was ove r, Mr.
Reagan, pa lpa bl y emba rrassed , comme nted tha t everyone was sorry
the Sovie t expe riment hadn't turned out quite the way John R eed
had fore told ... . Actu a ll y this is nonse nse if you have seen the film .
. . . True, it ta kes sca nt no tice o f the fac t tha t Lenin took the revolu–
tion away from the Socia l D emocra ts a nd tha t neve r aga in would
Rus sia see democracy, but Mr. Beatty wa writing less hi story tha n
roma nce ." Buckl ey concludes: "As a movie,
R eds
suffe rs from its
extraordina ry length , the so rt o f thin g tha t ha ppens when the same
person writes , produces, direc ts, a nd sta rs in a movie .
R eds
suffers
from a n exagge ra ted case of na rciss ism ," a critique tha t a grees with
ma ny othe rs bes ides mine . Wha t
could
tha t New York Film Critics
Circle have bee n thinking of?
The Sovie t Uni on is now ma king a three-pa rt movie about J ohn
Reed . "It will give back to R eed some of the sta rchy rec titude the
Beatty film took away," John Burns writes in the February 8
T imes .
The director is Serge i Bonda rchuk , who made his reputa tion with a
spectacul a r
War and Peace
a nd so presumabl y knows hi s bu siness
better tha n Bea tty. H e will have othe r adva ntages : the use of the
original se ttings in Leningrad instead of Beatty's mock-ups in Spa in
a nd Finla nd , te n thousand extras for the sto rming of the palace, e tc.
Nobody could expec t M osfilm to provide a ll this fo r
R eds ,
but Bea tty
mi ght have bee n gra nted the Winte r Pa lace for location shots had he
asked. On pas t fo rm , howeve r, one suspec ts he didn't.
Pa uline K ael sums it up : "In technique,
R eds
is the least inno–
va ti ve epic you can imagine. It's in ex pensive, ritzy, bi g-histori cal–
mov ie tas te.
