Samuel Fuller made his 1980 film The Big Red One for a fairly small amount of cash. This allowed him, or made him, concentrate on his characters. There is a lot of characterization in this one, especially for veteran actor Lee Marvin. (Take that, Hollywood today: You can take your CGI and flush it down a very real toilet.)I understand the original release was all but ignored by the public. This might have something to do with the ad campaign, which I remember as being low key -- a kind of existentialist film was what we would see should we have plopped our money down at the box office.
Last night I watched the 2004 "reconstruction". This is a 162 minute version, expanding on the truncated 116 minute original. Roger Ebert said it best when he wrote "the often dubious directors' cuts". What we are talking about with The Big Red One is not a director's cut, per se, as Mr. Fuller died in 1997 but it can reek of "too much" at times.
Whatever its name, this cut left me a little cold. I could not lose myself in the film, although the best part is the last twenty or so minutes, The Big Red One finds its legs here.
Film critic Richard Schickel supervised the reconstruction. He does a runnng commentary on the DVD -- I will listen, watch anew, and keep an open mind.
1 comment:
It's from the great Mark Hamill trilogy of The Big Red One, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, and Corvette Summer.
Sadly for him, another trilogy in his career causes his face to stick out like a severed arm. I think how did he get all the way to earth? But the Big Red One contains what may be my favourite Mark Hamill moment of acting, when Griff chases a nazi into an abandoned death camp set of ovens, corners the guy, and I'll spare the casual reader a spoiler of whether he turns to the proverbial dark side. Maybe I should put an image of that scene onto a t-shirt.
The movie has many scenes I remember being drawn into and one of the better bookends about acceptable killing.
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