Sightlines · reception
How Reds was received
1981 · Warren Beatty · Reds on Sightlines
The arc
A $35M pro-communist epic bankrolled by Paramount just as Reagan took office, it earned 12 Oscar nominations and Beatty the Best Director win — then famously lost Best Picture to Chariots of Fire, a result film fans have been re-litigating ever since. Today it's cherished as one of the last true old-Hollywood epics, the 'they literally could not make this now' movie.
What’s debated
The perennial fight: was Chariots of Fire beating it one of the great Best Picture robberies, and is its 195-minute runtime a feature or a test of devotion?
Its footprint
Its 'witnesses' — real elderly contemporaries of John Reed (including Henry Miller) interviewed straight to camera and woven through the drama — became one of cinema's most admired and imitated docu-fiction devices.
Where it stands
A cinephile's beloved-but-underseen giant: constantly invoked as the last gasp of New Hollywood ambition, far more cited than actually watched.
Did you know? With Reds, Warren Beatty joined Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) in the tiny club of people Oscar-nominated for producing, directing, writing, AND acting in the same film — and Beatty had already done it once before, with Heaven Can Wait. Ronald Reagan saw the film and reportedly told Beatty he enjoyed it but wished it had a happy ending.