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Asri-unix.223 net.movies utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure Tue Dec 15 14:57:46 1981 Reds, Ragtime n059 1422 01 Dec 81 BC-CANBY-MOVIES ADV06 2takes (FOR RELEASE: SUN., DEC. 6) By VINCENT CANBY c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK - In his characteristically calm, reasoned way, Andre Bazin, the late French critic, once wrote of a treasured piece of literature, which had just been made into a film, that although the film might not be the perfect equivalent to the written work, it was really not that bad and, after all, it would serve its purpose if it sent any filmgoers whatsoever back to read the original. Although Bazin was the mentor of Francois Truffaut and other young, cinema-obsessed critics who were then using the pages of Cahiers du Cinema to launch terrorist attacks on the established French filmmakers of the day, he himself never lost sight of the connection of films with the other arts, and with life itself. He comprehended the possibilities of films and did not automatically condemn them for their limitations, which, instead, he attempted to understand. Ridicule is easy and, in the end, it's often more self-serving than illuminating. Two ambitious new films, Milos Forman's ''Ragtime,'' adapted by Michael Weller from E.L. Doctorow's kaleidoscopic novel, and Warren Beatty's ''Reds,'' written by him and Trevor Griffiths, about the lives and loves of John Reed and Louise Bryant in and out of revolutionary Russia, ask for something akin to Bazin's patience and understanding. ''Ragtime'' may not deserve it, but ''Reds'' certainly does. ''Reds'' also deserves admiration, being the most interesting, most flamboyant, big-budget adventure film since David Lean's ''Lawrence of Arabia,'' as well as the first commercial American film in my memory to have as its hero a man who - at least publicly - remained at his death an unreconstructed, card-carrying Communist. Of course, Reed died in 1920, at the age of 33, before the death of Lenin, before Stalin's rise and before Trotsky's fall, when disillusion was not yet being acknowledged except by a handful of believers, including Emma Goldman. It says something about the political climate in this country even 30 years after the McCarthy era that this should be noteworthy. Just 10 years ago the Sam Spiegel-Franklin Schaffner ''Nicholas and Alexandra'' asked movie audiences to sympathize with the plight of the poor Romanovs, who in that film were in process of being deposed in the same upheaval that is so enthusiastically championed by John Reed in ''Reds.'' ''Ragtime'' and ''Reds'' aren't easily comparable, even though they overlap in time (pre-World War I America) and each reflects some of the ideas that were turning upside down the politics, economics, art and manners at the beginning of the 20th century. Doctorow's ''Ragtime'' is a densely packed, rambunctious work of the imagination in which historical figures like J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit rub shoulders (and sometimes more) with Doctorow's fictitious characters, creating a comic panorama of American life in which the optimism of the 19th century still survives, at least for a little while. ''Reds'' also is about optimism and the beginnings of disillusion. Its center is the straightforward story of the love affair and marriage of John Reed, the well-born, young, pre-World War I journalist and revolutionary, and the ferociously ambitious, slightly scatty Louise Bryant, who chucked home and husband in Portland, Ore., to follow Reed to Greenwich Village and her own fleeting fame as a journalist. With Reed, Louise witnessed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, out of which grew Reed's classic ''Ten Days That Shook the World.'' ''Ragtime'' was conceived as a novel, ''Reds'' as a film - a difference that is immediately apparent in the movies made by Forman and Beatty. Another difference is that although ''Reds'' may well send a lot of people back to various biographies of Reed and maybe even to ''Ten Days That Shook the World,'' ''Ragtime'' ends up in such confusion that it's less likely to create readers than a suspicion that the book's success must have been the result not of its own quality but of Eastern literary-Mafia hype. For all of Forman's and Weller's good intentions, their film severely diminishes, flattens and oversimplifies a very complex, revivifying novel. Where did the movie go wrong? The short answer - and perhaps the best - is that it went wrong when Dino De Laurentiis, the producer, bought the film rights. It's apparent in Weller's interviews that he was perfectly aware of the difficulties of dramatizing a novel that depends as much on the voice of the author, in long passages of exposition and comment, as on characters and dramatic events. Indeed, some of the most vivid characters in the book don't actually appJBdR\@RhX@DJR\N@LRNjdJf@dJFBXXJH@Dr@^Fh^d^nX@Bf@RL@hPJr@nJdJ@^LLfhBNJXfJ`BdBhJ@Ld^Z@hPJ@BFhR^\@^L@hPJ@\^lJX\@@@@h@hPJ@DJNR\\R\N@^L@hPJ@Z^lRJX@hPJdJ@BdJ@R\HRFBhR^\f@hPBh@.JXXJd@B\H ^d\@PBlJ@L^j\H@B@FR\JZBhRF@JbjRlBXJ]t to the style of the multilayered novel. The film cuts among its various story lines with the jaunty rhythm of its simulated, old-fashioned newsreels, which offer brief, highly stylized glimpses of prewar America, its heroes, politicians, celebrities, fashions, fads and commerce. Then, however, as the film progresses, you begin to feel as if you're watching people in a lifeboat throwing things overboard in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. (MORE)

nyt-12-01-81 1721est ********** n061 1445 01 Dec 81 BC-CANBY-MOVIES ADV06 1stadd (For release Sun Dec 6) NYT NEW YORK: stay afloat. I don't know whether it's worse to have read the book beforehand, or to be aware of what characters have been dropped, what events foreshortened or eliminated and which themes muddled, or not to have movie is supposed to be about or, worse, what is happening at any given moment or why. It's unfair to speculate on the kind of movie that might have been made by Robert Altman, who was originally set to make ''Ragtime'' from a screenplay by Doctorow. Altman (''Buffalo Bill and the Indians,'' ''Nashville,'' ''McCabe and Mrs. Miller'' and ''M.A.S.H.'') would seem to be an ideal choice. He has a particular feeling for the tragicomic pretensions of American life. Yet the Czech-born-and-bred Forman (''Hair,'' ''One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' ''Taking Off'') has the informed European's benignly critical, amused, perpetually amazed appreciation for what this country thinks it is, what it aspires to be and what it actually is. What's wrong with the movie is not the talent of the people who made it but the original material, which may well be unfilmable by anybody. ''Ragtime'' is confused but it's seldom boring. It looks great and it has some fine performances by a huge cast of actors that includes Howard E. Rollins, Elizabeth McGovern, Mary Steenburgen, Mandy Patinkin, Brad Dourif, Pat O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, James Olson, Norman Mailer, Kenneth McMillan and, in a small role that effectively distorts the emphasis of the film, James Cagney. Unlike ''Ragtime,'' which has as its antecedent a unique literary work, ''Reds'' is uninhibited by anything except certain facts of history and the the authors' imaginations. It has the freedom of movement of something intended as popular entertainment, and it takes its style from the passionate, sometimes selfish natures of its protagonists, John Reed (Beatty) and Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). Historians as well as critics may well find a number of things to quibble about, but more important is the way the film brings to life the fervor of a particular time and two quite extraordinary, larger-than-life characters who, almost innocently, stumble onto the most momentous event in European history since the French Revolution. Beatty, as producer, director, co-author and actor, has managed the difficult feat of making us see Reed both as a profoundly committed political personality and as the sort of perennial, privileged American undergraduate who regards revolutions as opportunities for self-expression. ''Reds'' is not to be confused with anything made by Sergei Eisenstein, including his ''October,'' also released as ''Ten Days That Shook the World.'' ''Reds'' is, rather, a highly romantic movie with an unusual (for an American entertainment film) sense of history. It's long but it covers a lot of ground: Pancho Villa's campaigns in Mexico, Portland, Ore., Greenwich Village, Provincetown, Mass., the Reeds' first trip to Russia in 1917 and their second trip in 1920 when Reed, having already written ''Ten Days'' and now fighting Bolshevik bureaucrats for recognition of his party of American Communists, suddenly died of typhus, thus to be buried in the Kremlin and to become fixed in Soviet history as a hero. Though historical personages (Eugene O'Neill, Max Eastman, Emma Goldman, Trotsky, Lenin and others) pop in and out of the film with some regularity, they never seem foolish in the way they usually do in most entertainment films. There are no lines of dialogue to equal ''The Agony and the Ecstasy's'' famous, ''Michelangelo, are you or are you not going to finish that ceiling?'' The screenplay is only occasionally overblown, as when Emma Goldman, staunchly played by Maureen Stapleton, is required to articulate the failings of the revolution in a manner to be understood by any 5-year-old. The central love story is honestly appealing, and Miss Keaton's Louise Bryant is a complicated, fully realized character - her best dramatic work ever. Of key importance is Beatty's use of interviews with more than two dozen people who were friends, contemporaries or near-contemporaries of John Reed and Louise Bryant. Among them: Rebecca West, Henry Miller, Adela Rogers St. John, Will Durant, Arthur Mayer, George Seldes and George Jessel. All very old (a number actually now gone, having died since the interviews were filmed), they gossip (''She spent too much money on clothes''), don't quite remember (''Did they have children? I've forgotten ...''), recall the heady days of pre-World War I Greenwich Village and some things that don't really have much to do with John and Louise (''... and another person who was awfully ignorant about Russia was Beatrice Webb!''). These recollections and ramblings, even the late Jessel's, add a historical dimension to the film, a sort of autumnal shapeliness that is otherwise lacking since Beatty and Griffiths resolutely refuse to tidy things up by having Reed renounce the revolution at the end of his life. ''Reds'' isn't perfect. It has its silly and awkward moments. Like ''Ragtime,'' it, too, leaves out characters we'd like to meet (Lincoln Steffens, Mabel Dodge, Margaret Sanger) and compresses time and events, but it excites the imagination. Though it's personal rather than ideological, ''Reds'' dramatizes with great emotional effect - better than any other entertainment film I can think of - a remarkable period in America's intellectual development and self-awareness.

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