Reconstructing Sam Fuller's "The Big Red One"

November 12, 2004 9:57 AM

“The real glory of war is surviving.” One of Hollywood's biggest crimes of the last quarter-century is being set right this week with the release of "The Big Red One: The Reconstruction", a beautifully restored version of Samuel Fuller's butchered 1980 masterpiece. The stunning new version restores some 15 scenes and more than 40 minutes of footage to Fuller's grittily autobiographical film about his World War II stint as a GI with the Army's First Infantry Division. Filmed in Israel, the film stars Lee Marvin in his greatest performance. The cut version of the film flopped, and Fuller went to his grave in 1997 bemoaning the fate of "The Big Red One," telling every journalist he met that he dreamed of seeing his original vision up on the big screen. Richard Schickel, critic and documentary filmmaker, printed 70,000 feet of film from negatives stored in a vault in Kansas City and supervised the editing according to Fuller's original shooting script. "What they released in 1980 wasn't a bad movie," Schickel said. "What the studio wanted was a gung-ho war movie. What we've added is the real Sam stuff: the boredom, the absurdity of an ordinary soldier caught up in a vast war". More inside.
posted by matteo (24 comments total)

Not everyone loves it. Stephen Hunter WaPo review. Reg. required.
posted by mojohand at 10:02 AM on November 12, 2004

oh man, that is awesome. I cannot wait to see that
posted by das_2099 at 10:02 AM on November 12, 2004

Fuller quote:

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.
________

A free-association game Fuller played with Tim Robbins in the actor's film about Fuller, "The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera":

Robbins: "Hero."

Fuller: Don't believe in it.

Robbins: "Coward."

Fuller: Don't believe in it.

Robbins: "Fascist."

Fuller: Enemy of mankind.

Robbins: "Communist."

Fuller: Enemy of mankind.

Robbins: "Democrat."

Fuller: Mankind.


________

some of the surprises found in the reconstruction process:

One of the most amazing finds was buried in the day-for-night footage. “It was very dark on the dubs, so very often I couldn't tell what the scenes were.” McKenzie continues. “But there was one scene I had kind of skipped over, and it turns out it was the last scene in the movie, not the movie as it ends, which is a series of stills, and it's a little bit '70s TV. I thought, ‘Gee, that's sure looks like the way I'd end the movie.’ I went back to look at the script. Sure enough, that's how it's supposed to end.”

Criterion has done a great job for other Fuller dvd titles:

Shock Corridor

Naked Kiss
posted by matteo at 10:06 AM on November 12, 2004

I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan....
posted by jonmc at 10:12 AM on November 12, 2004 [1 favorite]

jon: who isn't?
even Tony Lane, who didn't like the new cut, writes that

you must see this film for one unstoppable reason, and that is Lee Marvin. He is its cold core, believably weathered by years of attrition. A single closeup of those eyes is not just a calmative to his jittery subordinates but an ice-blue rebuke to the more rackety aggression of the man behind the camera. As for the morality of war, Marvin has it sewn up: “We don’t murder. We kill.”
posted by matteo at 10:16 AM on November 12, 2004

trivia, then, matteo: what was the name of Lee Marvin's biker gang in The Wild One and what is the historical importance of the answer?
posted by jonmc at 10:18 AM on November 12, 2004

the real First Infantry Division is in Iraq, now. here's their history
posted by matteo at 10:19 AM on November 12, 2004

jon: beatles/beetles
posted by matteo at 10:22 AM on November 12, 2004

The Big Red One in WWII

and the famous shoulder patch
posted by matteo at 10:26 AM on November 12, 2004

*doffs hat*
*realizes he's not waering hat, doffs anyway*
posted by jonmc at 10:28 AM on November 12, 2004

All kidding aside, I remember seeing this film for the first time on a neighbors cable when I was about 11. We were waiting for Escape From New York to come on, which was a treat as it was the first R-Rated movie my folks were knowingly allowing me to watch. But I remember being riveted by the war movie, and I distinctly remember Marvin's "we don't murder," speech. And judging from the word association above, he seems like my kind of guy. Good post.
posted by jonmc at 10:40 AM on November 12, 2004

My god, I'm so excited about this I'm vibrating. Thank god I can go see it in the theater. I might freak out if I couldn't. This cut sounds a lot more like the sam fuller who made shock corridor.
posted by lumpenprole at 10:54 AM on November 12, 2004

I recommend Sam Fuller's autobiography "A Third Face" which has an incredible amount of information about the making of "The Big Red One." It's also a really terrific memoir about a true character -- journalist, filmmaker, veteran, drifter.
posted by macadamiaranch at 11:22 AM on November 12, 2004

Thanks for the history link, matteo. This line gives me chills:

In the summer of 1965, the Big Red One was the first division called to fight in Vietnam.

My dad, who was in the 1st Infantry, had his commission run out three weeks before that event. I was born a year later. Lots of "what ifs" in my family.
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:28 AM on November 12, 2004

is there an official website for this release? any idea if it will be playing in the SF area? no sign of it i can see on the Wrner Bros website or IMDB.
posted by billsaysthis at 11:53 AM on November 12, 2004

I saw it at the Chicago Film Festival about a month ago.

This is one of the first war movies I remember seeing with my dad (who was a Viet Nam Vet) and it struck me as a movie and also how much it moved him. It is still burned into my memory pretty crisply. Seeing this extended version really does add something to it.
posted by Jeffy at 12:14 PM on November 12, 2004

Slightly OT: I remember riding with my mother in a small South Dakota town when the local radio announced what was playing at the movie theater that week: "The Big Red One". Unfortunately, the announcer was unfamiliar with the subject and said it with all the stress on "Red". My mother had to pull off the road because she was laughing so hard. To this day, I can't hear about this movie without thinking of the great Lee Marvin porn flick that never was.
posted by joaquim at 12:15 PM on November 12, 2004

billysaythis: It'll be at the Castro in SF December 10-15.
posted by Daddio at 1:43 PM on November 12, 2004

Thanks, Daddio.
posted by billsaysthis at 3:22 PM on November 12, 2004

i was young when i first saw this as well. i seem to remember a scene where Marvin tosses a soldier's testicle away...did that really happen in the movie?
posted by NationalKato at 4:18 PM on November 12, 2004

Thanks, matteo. I'd heard the stories about the studio chop job (obviously hoping to recreate some grizzled Dirty Dozen magic), but seeing the film made me wonder whether there was much there to begin with. It has flashes of brilliance but much of it is limp and episodic. It's said the anonymity of every other soldier character was deliberate -- the survivors feel that way about the privates they barely knew. In any case nobody quite knew what to do with the film he made. The film enjoyed a cult reputation for its apolitical "realism" but one that did not seem to rise above quotidian soldier-empathy.

It's probably true that most war epics which are gritty and gory are anti-war, and most war epics which are pro-war are not gritty and gory. That does make BR1 an exception by default. Fuller probably gets the war-weariness of soldiers more right than anybody else, certainly more right than liberal filmmakers trying to make a point could (even when they create masterpieces such as Apocalypse Now or flawed works such as Platoon), while retaining the empathy and point of view that make a film more than shoot-the-Hun action fare.

It is worth pointing out that the world tour of the war that the 1st did was real. The Vietnam-era yearlong rotations were an innovation, and an unsuccessful one at that, and the army continues to experiment with different means of keeping troops in Iraq fresh.

This was also really the last non-Star Wars shot for Mark Hamill at a serious career. I don't think it demonstrates this would have been a great loss, though.

If you're ever in Chicago, a visit to the 1st Division Museum at Robert McCormick's estate Cantigny [he was a Colonel in the 1st at that battle) is a worthwhile extra-day trip.

In the summer of 1965, the Big Red One was the first division called to fight in Vietnam.

Note on service myopia: they were the first major deployment of Army troops. The first US units deployed were the 9th Marines at Da Nang, three months earlier. They, too, were preceded by Air Force units conducting air defense and bombing missions (such as Rolling Thunder) and Navy units performing riverine missions (similar to John Kerry's later service and the PBR in Apocalypse Now), and some 9 years of US advisors and logistical and training support (not to mention US underwriting of the French Indochina war). The first US troops to see combat were helicopter pilots ferrying ARVN units, in 1961.
posted by dhartung at 10:58 PM on November 12, 2004

i seem to remember a scene where Marvin tosses a soldier's testicle away...did that really happen in the movie?

I remember that, as well. I remember it as being Mark Hamill's testicle, actually, which meshes up nicely with dhartung's comment above.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:47 AM on November 13, 2004

No, it's not Hamill's character that loses a testicle, it's a more minor charater, but the scene is definitely in there. The key line is "you won't miss it, that's why they give you two,"
posted by biffa at 2:55 AM on November 15, 2004

'All war stories are told by survivors':
An interview with Samuel Fuller
Roger Ebert / August 17, 1980
posted by matteo at 1:04 PM on November 25, 2004