saadi1-288-801401

It seems unbelievable now that back in the day so many praised this film, that it won so many Oscars, even Ronald Reagan watched it at a private screening in the WH in awe.

But 'Reds' like so many other 1980s films has not aged well and in 2025 is practically unwatchable (another example is the British film Letter to Brezhnev).

I particularly disliked the dated heavy sepia or tobacco filter in front of Vittorio Storaro's lens that was used to hide the wildly inaccurate locations and interiors.

The spoilt philandering Jack Reed is portrayed as a saintly hard working socialist, there are no other women in the film other that Diane Keaton's Bryant, not counting the elderly Emma Goldman.

We know that Jack Reed is repeatedly referred to as a womaniser and a playboy by his contemporaries but there are now no records of these women including the ones in Russia however the Beatty film could have put the record straight regarding some of his lovers since they interviewed so many 'Witnesses' for the film.

While arguably one of the worst films ever made, it might be interesting to dig out some facts as to why and how these types of films came about in the mid 1980s.

Frank Clarke the writer and Chris Bernard the director of this film had both been working on Brookside and were living together in Liverpool, though apparently not as a couple.

I imagine that it would have been obvious to them early on, that Russian sailors would not be able to leave a ship docked at any port in the West including Liverpool nor would they be able to spend their Rubles going to nightclubs. So why didn't they just change the script and make the sailors Yugoslav and in possession of a few D Marks for instance? One reason could be that Letter to Tito might not have had quite the same absurdist ring to it but the real answer may be more complicated.

In the 1980s the Soviet Union spent about 2 Billion dollars a year on covert propaganda. In England at that time one of the most vociferously pro-Soviet collections of people were the art house film buff community. Some of these may have received, directly or indirectly, tiny sums which would nevertheless had a huge impact on getting projects off the ground. If one had not personally come across the pro-Russian art house gay and lesbian cognoscenti in person back then it would be difficult imagining them.

Russian cultural icons like Tarkovsky and the poet Irina Ratushinskaya I imagine, were simply speechless when confronted with films like this at festivals. Tarkovsky mentions the worn out 'Mise-en-scène' of lovers separated by a fence in his book Sculpting in Time. And Ratushinskaya said the only people she'd met who believed in Marx and Lenin were in England.

The scene involving a fence separating the two lovers lasts a whole 10 minutes in this film!

I was browsing the reviews for this before I saw it and noticed the negative comments and low ratings. Unfortunately many reviewers were giving the key moments of the plot away without warning. When I watched it, in French I thought it was a superb black comedy. Not as stylish as a Tarantino film but actually much better in substance. Lee Marvin does an amazing job doing his own lines in French. I was wondering why the others had found the film risible and upon investigation I found the American dubbed version streaming, which IS risible. People should understand that to do justice to this film, an English language version would cost almost as much as the original film and is well nigh impossible. American dubs of Franco-Italian cinema are hardly ever worth watching. Even if you don't understand French, the subtitles plus the music of the delivery, the intonations, are enough to experience the original. I don't know how easily you can find a French language version with good English subtitles though.