NYFF Review: The Big Red One

This is fictional life based on factual death. Sam Fuller's restored title card is just one of the many additions to be found in the newly reconstructed The Big Red One, Fuller's World War II epic from 1980. At the time of its initial release, Fuller was forced by (the now defunct) Lorimar to make major cuts to the film, something which caused him great dismay. Now, twenty-four years later, we finally have an opportunity to see the film as the director intended, thanks to Richard Schikel who tracked down and re-incorporated the thought-lost-forever footage. At 162 minutes (nearly an hour longer), the film seems much less episodic, and gives us greater insight to the Sergeant, brilliantly portrayed by the inimitable Lee Marvin. Based on Fuller's own World War II experiences with the US Army First Infantry Division, The Big Red One follows Lee Marvin's Sergeant and his core team of four "dogfaces" through Africa, Italy, France, Belgium and finally to a Nazi death camp in Czechoslovakia. Robert Carradine plays Private Zeb, the Bronx born cigar-chomping writer who is the alter ego of Fuller himself. (Hard to believe that this is the same actor that will go on to star in Revenge of the Nerds.) Rounding out the rest of the Sergeant's team are Private Griff (Mark Hamill), Private Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco) and Private Johnson (Kelly Ward). Between the many odds-always-against-them battles, the four will find time to laugh, swap stories, and do whatever they must to avoid thinking about the sense of doom that is constantly hovering over them. Unlike the WWII films that precede it, Fuller is not interested in spinning a tale of heroic glory nor is he going to play into the hackneyed clichés of the war genre. (Not once do we see a soldier pull out a snapshot of his wife moments before being shot.) This is simply the story of four young men, their gruff but likeable Sergeant, and their overwhelming desire to survive. While Fuller certainly doesn't glorify war, he's not at all interested in preaching or finger wagging to a younger generation either. There are no political or moral messages here, and though it clearly is an anti-war film, the point isn't belabored. The trite but true "war is hell" seems to sum up Fuller's position. This is best exemplified by the contrast between Marvin and the German soldier Schroeder (Siegfried Rauch). A minor character in the original version, Schroeder is now fully presented as the dark doppelganger to Marvin's Sergeant. Though the motivation of the two men may differ, the words they offer their troubled soldiers are identical -- "We don't murder, we kill." But whereas Schroeder is driven by his unyielding love for Deutschland and der Fuhrer, the Sergeant's war is less ideological than it is personal -- he is exorcising demons haunting him since WWI. Generally unaffected by the fighting and death that surrounds him, his one soft spot is for children, and there are two very strong sequences with children that will bring a tear to all but the hardest hearted. Of course, a Sam Fuller film wouldn't be a Sam Fuller film without a certain amount of raw machismo. Though not overdone, some of the scenes are less than subtle -- soldiers slipping condoms over their gun barrels (to keep out the salt water) is taking the gun as phallus metaphor a bit too far. Same with a scene of a young soldier who has tripped a landmine that has castrated him. Fearing he has lost his penis, Marvin assures him he only lost one testicle, telling him "you can live without it. That's why they gave you two." Instead of leaving it with that, the soldier repeatedly screams at the top of his lungs, "I sill have my cock!" Though these scenes don't detract from the film's power, they are guilty of drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. With this restoration, The Big Red One can now be added into the pantheon of great WWII films. At the same time, the film can also be considered one of Lee Marvin's greatest achievements as an actor. (Fuller was even able to get a great performance out of Mark Hamill, something Lucas never could.) It's only a matter of time before somebody writes the inevitable comparison to the far inferior Saving Private Ryan, but there's no doubt that Fuller's personal statement about the war, in this new version as he intended, will better stand the test of time. The Big Red One screens at the New York Film Festival on Oct 2 @ 11:00AM, and will have a limited release in November.