The Big Red One

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Movie
German title The Big Red One
Original title The Big Red One
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1980
length 156 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Samuel Fuller
script Samuel Fuller
production Gene Corman
music Dana Kaproff
camera Adam Greenberg
cut Morton Tubor
occupation

The Big Red One is an American war film from 1980 , directed by Samuel Fuller based on his own - autobiographical - script. Big Red One is the nickname of the 1st Infantry Division .

action

The film takes place in World War II and tells the story of a veteran sergeant and a small troop of infantrymen who are deployed as part of the 1st Infantry Division in various theaters of war.

From the landing on Algeria's coast in 1942 , a mission in Sicily in July 1943, participation in D-Day 1944 , to the liberation of a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in May 1945, the film accompanies the five leading actors on their missions. The fact that they have survived all missions so far without major injuries earned them the nickname “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse” within the army.

Awards

Samuel Fuller was nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1980 . The film received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award and the Seattle Film Critics Award in 2004 .

Autobiography by Samuel Fuller

Various aspects of Samuel Fuller's life come to light in the film and its main characters. Like Zab in the film, Fuller wrote a novel before he was called up for war. Like Griff, he was also a good draftsman and caricaturist throughout his life. Furthermore, Fuller himself was assigned to the "Big Red One" as a soldier during the Second World War and was personally involved in the liberation of the Falkenau concentration camp , which is also discussed in the film. Immediately after the liberation of the concentration camp, he made film recordings in the camp and in the nearby village of Falkenau in order to document the conditions and events found there. He stated that the memories of the events and conditions in the camp had traumatized him so much that he did not process the original recordings until 1988 as part of a documentary and finally published them.

The reconstruction

Samuel Fuller did not agree with the version cut and shown by the studio, but never had the option of a "Director's Cut" version. After Fuller's death, this task was taken over by the producer and film critic Richard Schickel , who sifted through all of the film material from the Warner Bros. archives and had it re-edited by Samuel Fuller after the last original script version. The result was the 47 minutes longer, digitally revised version of the film shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, which is also available as a “Special Edition 2 Disc Set” on DVD.

“In the long version, the comic-like impression of the theatrical version is softened; [... It] does not show a heroic story, is not an anti-war film and is not a disavowal, but rather portrays the struggle for bare survival with haunting severity.

- film service

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel Fuller, Christa Lang Fuller, Jerome Henry Rudes: A Third Face - My Tale of Writing, Fighting an Filmmaking ; New York: Applause Theater & Cinema Books, 2002; ISBN 1-55783-627-2
  2. ↑ The Big Red One. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used