The Big Red One: A Review.
Back in the day, I rented a VHS copy of THE BIG RED ONE from my local Mom and Pop video only to get home and find that the tape wouldn’t play; this being the only copy the store had on the shelf, that was it for seeing what I had been told was one of the all time great war movies - a genre of which I am a big fan. Somehow over the intervening years, I never got around to viewing this classic until recently, when I was reminded that the end of the summer of 2017 marked 30 years since the passing of Lee Marvin; an anniversary which prompted me to seek out a copy of the 2004 reconstituted version of what is arguably Marvin’s last great film. It made me think that fate was intervening back in the day, because that old VHS copy was the badly edited version released to theaters, while the film I saw, with more than an hour of restored scenes, is a true and full vision of what famed director Samuel Fuller deemed his masterpiece. My original loss turned out to be a real back handed gain.
Fuller was one of Hollywood’s true originals, a former newspaper man and author who fought in European theater during WWII, serving with the First Infantry Division; after the war he found employment in Hollywood, first as a scriptwriter, then as a director, specializing in B movies with a certain distinctive style, that, in time, would win him legions of fans and admirers, especially among the young film makers of the '60s and '70s. A Sam Fuller film often tackled subjects and themes other directors would shy away from, and his war movies, westerns and melodramas were known for their hard edged wit and for not pulling any punches. Fuller’s dream project was to make a movie about his experiences in WWII, one that took him more than two decades to get made, but finally in 1978, he was able to obtain financing and begin filming using a script he himself authored. This movie was to be an appreciation of the men Fuller had served alongside with during the war, and, I think, his way of reminding the generations that came afterward just who had fought so hard to preserve the freedoms they enjoyed. Sadly, the producers took the film away from Fuller once it was completed, cut the nearly three hour film down to less than two and released it in the late summer of 1980, where it did very lackluster business despite a good reception at the Cannes film festival and favorable reviews from critics.
Though Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller did not live to see the 2004 reconstituted version of THE BIG RED ONE, I think both would be enormously proud of the restoration of one of their finest films. Though not a “director’s cut,” the DVD, with an exceptional commentary by critic Richard Schiekel, and running nearly three hours, gives us the gritty, infantryman’s view of World War II that Fuller wanted us to see. The longer version has a stronger narrative flow as the movie follows a unit of young American GI’s and their much older Sergeant (a veteran of WWI) through a series of battles with the Germans, starting with North Africa and ending with the liberation of a concentration camp in Germany at the war’s end. There is one marvelously staged and striking scene after another, as these young men go from one theater of battle to another, starting out as fresh and nervous recruits and ending up as battle hardened vets, sticking together and surviving one deadly encounter with the Nazis after another, outlasting most of the replacements who come to fill the ranks; and all the time led by Marvin’s tough Sergeant, in a role that fit him as perfectly as his uniform. The young men are played by Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine (as a character based on Fuller himself), Bobby Di Cicco, and Kelly Ward; all of whom should have gone on to be much bigger stars. Seigfried Rauch is Schroeder, a German counterpart to Marvin’s Sergeant, who comes in and out of the story multiple times before the fateful final scene. One of the replacements is played by Perry Lang, whose face is familiar to anyone who watched a lot of teen comedies back in the day.
What struck me most about this film is its lack of typical Hollywood war movie theatrics and heroics, as when Marvin’s Sergeant is reunited with the young men in his squad after being briefly captured during the battle at the Kasserine Pass, where most of his untested squad threw down their rifles and fled the Germans. You expect Marvin to tear them a new one when he finds them relaxing on a North African beach, which would have happened if John Wayne (who had once been considered for the part in the '50s) had played the character. Instead, Fuller stages the reunion in a long shot, we don’t hear a word, but the emotion of the moment is clear. Hamill’s sensitive Griff, has a problem with pulling the trigger when face to face with the enemy, yet in every other way, he is a competent, brave and effective soldier (especially in the D-Day sequence), yet Griff is never confronted by his fellow infantrymen, never called “yellow” and forced to prove his courage to the satisfaction of others. There is a point to this subplot and Fuller resolves it in the finale. We get the full sense of the combat soldier’s view of this world, where the ground was constantly shifting under their feet: they are charging into a German held building and taking fire in the afternoon, and then one of them is having sex with female partisan that evening; being shot at from snipers on the way to eliminating an 88 gun, and once the deadly mission is completed, sitting down to dinner with grateful Italians. There is the constant presence of children, over and over, Fuller returns to them and shows in vivid ways the impact of war upon them; this is another thing rooted in Fuller’s own wartime experience. This has to be the first film to note that American soldiers died from heat attacks on the front lines. The film had a limited budget, but Fuller did amazing things with it, they only had a couple of tanks to use, but you would never know it except from Schiekel’s commentary; the D-Day scene may pale in comparison with the one in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, or THE LONGEST DAY, but it works within this movie. There is the expected blood and gore, but nothing like what Sam Peckinpah would have done if he’d been the director; I think Fuller would have considered that exploitative and disrespectful.
With his gray hair and weathered face, Lee Marvin had his last great role as the unnamed Sergeant; he was a wounded Marine veteran of the Pacific and knew this character inside and out. Reportedly, he and Fuller were in perfect harmony on the set, each knowing what the other wanted. He clearly trusted Fuller implicitly, even going so far as to allow a degenerate German orderly to kiss him on the lips (surely a first in Marvin’s career) in the Tunis sequence when the Sergeant has been captured. I think the final sequence between the Sergeant and the small boy he has liberated from the Nazi death camp is the finest thing Marvin did in his long career; it is simply unforgettable. As the '80s wore on, Marvin’s years of hard drinking and living caught up with him, he would pass away in 1987, and be buried at Arlington. Quite fitting for the man some of us consider to be the greatest American badass ever.
Why did THE BIG RED ONE fail at the box office? By the summer of 1980, the era of the big World War II epic of the late '50s and '60s had passed and there seemed to be nothing more to say about a conflict fading into history; APOCALYPSE NOW was playing in theaters and audiences wanted to see movies about Vietnam; they wanted to see Mark Hamill fight Darth Vader with a light saber, not shoot Germans with an M-1 rifle. The only person anyone wanted to see fighting Nazis in the '80s was Indiana Jones. Another good movie had fallen victim to bad timing. After the failure of THE BIG RED ONE and the shelving of his controversial film, WHITE DOG, the following year, Sam Fuller turned his back on Hollywood for good, working in Europe for many years; truly our loss.
Yet, it stands now as one of the great American war films, and a definitive statement on the men who defeated Hitler’s war machine. THE BIG RED ONE is moving, but brutally unsentimental, horrific and funny at the same time, a film that gets better with repeat viewings. Wherever they are, I am sure Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller would be well pleased with how it turned out.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
Fuller was one of Hollywood’s true originals, a former newspaper man and author who fought in European theater during WWII, serving with the First Infantry Division; after the war he found employment in Hollywood, first as a scriptwriter, then as a director, specializing in B movies with a certain distinctive style, that, in time, would win him legions of fans and admirers, especially among the young film makers of the '60s and '70s. A Sam Fuller film often tackled subjects and themes other directors would shy away from, and his war movies, westerns and melodramas were known for their hard edged wit and for not pulling any punches. Fuller’s dream project was to make a movie about his experiences in WWII, one that took him more than two decades to get made, but finally in 1978, he was able to obtain financing and begin filming using a script he himself authored. This movie was to be an appreciation of the men Fuller had served alongside with during the war, and, I think, his way of reminding the generations that came afterward just who had fought so hard to preserve the freedoms they enjoyed. Sadly, the producers took the film away from Fuller once it was completed, cut the nearly three hour film down to less than two and released it in the late summer of 1980, where it did very lackluster business despite a good reception at the Cannes film festival and favorable reviews from critics.
Though Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller did not live to see the 2004 reconstituted version of THE BIG RED ONE, I think both would be enormously proud of the restoration of one of their finest films. Though not a “director’s cut,” the DVD, with an exceptional commentary by critic Richard Schiekel, and running nearly three hours, gives us the gritty, infantryman’s view of World War II that Fuller wanted us to see. The longer version has a stronger narrative flow as the movie follows a unit of young American GI’s and their much older Sergeant (a veteran of WWI) through a series of battles with the Germans, starting with North Africa and ending with the liberation of a concentration camp in Germany at the war’s end. There is one marvelously staged and striking scene after another, as these young men go from one theater of battle to another, starting out as fresh and nervous recruits and ending up as battle hardened vets, sticking together and surviving one deadly encounter with the Nazis after another, outlasting most of the replacements who come to fill the ranks; and all the time led by Marvin’s tough Sergeant, in a role that fit him as perfectly as his uniform. The young men are played by Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine (as a character based on Fuller himself), Bobby Di Cicco, and Kelly Ward; all of whom should have gone on to be much bigger stars. Seigfried Rauch is Schroeder, a German counterpart to Marvin’s Sergeant, who comes in and out of the story multiple times before the fateful final scene. One of the replacements is played by Perry Lang, whose face is familiar to anyone who watched a lot of teen comedies back in the day.
What struck me most about this film is its lack of typical Hollywood war movie theatrics and heroics, as when Marvin’s Sergeant is reunited with the young men in his squad after being briefly captured during the battle at the Kasserine Pass, where most of his untested squad threw down their rifles and fled the Germans. You expect Marvin to tear them a new one when he finds them relaxing on a North African beach, which would have happened if John Wayne (who had once been considered for the part in the '50s) had played the character. Instead, Fuller stages the reunion in a long shot, we don’t hear a word, but the emotion of the moment is clear. Hamill’s sensitive Griff, has a problem with pulling the trigger when face to face with the enemy, yet in every other way, he is a competent, brave and effective soldier (especially in the D-Day sequence), yet Griff is never confronted by his fellow infantrymen, never called “yellow” and forced to prove his courage to the satisfaction of others. There is a point to this subplot and Fuller resolves it in the finale. We get the full sense of the combat soldier’s view of this world, where the ground was constantly shifting under their feet: they are charging into a German held building and taking fire in the afternoon, and then one of them is having sex with female partisan that evening; being shot at from snipers on the way to eliminating an 88 gun, and once the deadly mission is completed, sitting down to dinner with grateful Italians. There is the constant presence of children, over and over, Fuller returns to them and shows in vivid ways the impact of war upon them; this is another thing rooted in Fuller’s own wartime experience. This has to be the first film to note that American soldiers died from heat attacks on the front lines. The film had a limited budget, but Fuller did amazing things with it, they only had a couple of tanks to use, but you would never know it except from Schiekel’s commentary; the D-Day scene may pale in comparison with the one in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, or THE LONGEST DAY, but it works within this movie. There is the expected blood and gore, but nothing like what Sam Peckinpah would have done if he’d been the director; I think Fuller would have considered that exploitative and disrespectful.
With his gray hair and weathered face, Lee Marvin had his last great role as the unnamed Sergeant; he was a wounded Marine veteran of the Pacific and knew this character inside and out. Reportedly, he and Fuller were in perfect harmony on the set, each knowing what the other wanted. He clearly trusted Fuller implicitly, even going so far as to allow a degenerate German orderly to kiss him on the lips (surely a first in Marvin’s career) in the Tunis sequence when the Sergeant has been captured. I think the final sequence between the Sergeant and the small boy he has liberated from the Nazi death camp is the finest thing Marvin did in his long career; it is simply unforgettable. As the '80s wore on, Marvin’s years of hard drinking and living caught up with him, he would pass away in 1987, and be buried at Arlington. Quite fitting for the man some of us consider to be the greatest American badass ever.
Why did THE BIG RED ONE fail at the box office? By the summer of 1980, the era of the big World War II epic of the late '50s and '60s had passed and there seemed to be nothing more to say about a conflict fading into history; APOCALYPSE NOW was playing in theaters and audiences wanted to see movies about Vietnam; they wanted to see Mark Hamill fight Darth Vader with a light saber, not shoot Germans with an M-1 rifle. The only person anyone wanted to see fighting Nazis in the '80s was Indiana Jones. Another good movie had fallen victim to bad timing. After the failure of THE BIG RED ONE and the shelving of his controversial film, WHITE DOG, the following year, Sam Fuller turned his back on Hollywood for good, working in Europe for many years; truly our loss.
Yet, it stands now as one of the great American war films, and a definitive statement on the men who defeated Hitler’s war machine. THE BIG RED ONE is moving, but brutally unsentimental, horrific and funny at the same time, a film that gets better with repeat viewings. Wherever they are, I am sure Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller would be well pleased with how it turned out.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
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