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The term "sprawling epic" was coined long before Warren Beatty produced this ambitious, richly detailed romantic drama set against the tumultuous backdrop of early-20th-century radical politics. But Reds, which was released theatrically in 1981 and comes now to DVD in a freshly spiffed-up 25th Anniversary Edition, is a sprawling epic like no other. Beatty, who also co-wrote and directed, plays radical American journalist John Reed, a part of New York's flourishing, Greenwich Village-based community of bohemians in the early 1900s. He’s in love with aspiring writer Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), but with intense intellectual curiosity and a rabid desire to be in the thick of things, he ventures off to Russia to chronicle the October Revolution spearheaded by the newly minted Bolshevik movement. The idealistic Reed embraces many of the Bolsheviks' socialist principles and sees in them great hope for America. In the movie’s roughly eight-year arc -- Reed died just shy of his 33rd birthday in 1920, in Moscow, and is the only American buried in the Kremlin -- the screenplay frames his political disillusionment with his marriage to Bryant. It is a tumultuous relationship: The bored Bryant runs away from her first marriage in Oregon for the excitement of Greenwich Village, marries Reed, sees him off to Moscow, and embarks on an affair with the playwright Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson). Reed and Bryant’s emotional reunion in a Russian train station ranks among the great romantic climaxes in modern film, in part because the chemistry between Beatty and Keaton is immediately evident (they were off-screen lovers as well at the time). While lavishly appointed, scrupulously accurate in its depiction of the period, and meticulously crafted, Reds is not a perfect film. But the film is powerful and forcefully told, (as well as highly acclaimed, scoring wins for Beatty as best director, and Stapleton as best supporting actress, among its 12 Oscar nominations); an idea-driven spectacle that, one expects, could never be made today. . Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Few filmmakers other than Warren Beatty would have had the courage and vision to fashion an epic film from the life of famed American Communist John Reed (who is the only US citizen buried in the Kremlin). The film is an effort to humanize a political movement that has previously been depicted on screen in a series of unsubtle and prejudicial broad strokes. The film begins in 1915, when Reed (Beatty) makes the acquaintance of married Portland journalist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). So persuasive is Reed's point of view--and so charismatic is Reed himself-- that Bryant kicks over the traces and joins Reed and his fellow radicals. Among the famous personages depicted herein are Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson) and Max Eastman (Richard Herrmann). The second half of this nearly-200-minute film skims through the years when Reed, now a Russian resident, becomes disillusioned by the harsh realities of Bolshevism. Despite the celebrity line-up of real-life "witnesses" to the events depicted in the film (ranging from novelist Henry Miller to comedian George Jessel!), historians took Reds to task for its oversimplification of events and its laundering of the notoriously promiscuous Louise Bryant. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 097361197746
• Source: PARAMOUNT
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: DTS 5.1-Channel Surround Sound
• Editions: Anniversary Edition, Subtitled
• Time: 3:15:00
• Sales Rank: 26,052

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