‘Big Red One’ gets bigger
The Big Red One -- Special Edition
Warner, $27
SAMUEL FULLER’S 1980 World War II epic “The Big Red One” (Warner Home Video, $27) is bravura filmmaking. It’s action-packed, engrossing, dramatic, funny. The performances are strong, and Fuller, who was a member of the First Infantry Division, a.k.a. the Big Red One, stages the combat sequences beautifully.
But the film was heavily diluted when it was released 25 years ago. Lorimar, the now defunct studio that produced it, cut nearly an hour out without Fuller’s blessing or guidance. For years, rumors circulated that the excised footage still existed, and when Warner Bros. found a promotion reel for the film in its vault in 1999 that included numerous scenes not featured in the release print, it was decided to try to restore the movie, bringing it as close as possible to the late director’s vision.
A former journalist, the scrappy, maverick writer and director made several hard-hitting, uncompromising “B” movies in the 1950s and early ‘60s that critics adored and that have inspired today’s filmmakers. Such films as “The Steel Helmet,” “Fixed Bayonets!,” “Pickup on South Street,” “The Naked Kiss” and “House of Bamboo” buoyed his career.
But by the mid-1960s, his prospects began to fizzle. He directed for TV, moved to France, even acted in other directors’ films. “The Big Red One” was supposed to be his comeback.
Shot for just $4 million on a short schedule in Israel, “Big Red One” is based on Fuller’s experiences with the First Infantry. It follows a grizzled sergeant (Lee Marvin, in one of his most full-blooded performances) and the four young men of his rifle squad (Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco, Kelly Ward) for the three years they are together on the European front during the war. They land at Omaha Beach on D-day. Fight the Battle of the Bulge. Liberate a concentration camp. And despite the carnage and destruction, the squad makes it through the war unharmed.
Fuller, who died in 1997 at 85, appears in a restored scene as a newsreel photographer.
Extras: The two-disc set is one of the best-produced digital editions of the year and adds immeasurably to the viewing experience. The first disc includes informative commentary from film critic and scholar Richard Schickel, who produced the reconstruction. The second DVD contains a new full-length documentary, “The Real Glory: Reconstructing the Big Red One,” which features candid, funny interviews with the cast, as well as a detailed look at how the film was put back together like a big jigsaw puzzle. There are restoration comparisons and alternate scenes that for various reasons were not part of the reconstruction, the 1980 promo reel that kicked off the restoration, and a vintage War Department featurette on the real Fighting First, as well as Schickel’s documentary “The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller.”
