The Red and The White

Rating:
Summary: Buy it now
Review: Great films like "The Red and the White" stun and overpower us into forgetting every other movie we have seen. They don't cater to our prejudices, they don't flatter us into feeling good about ourselves. They refresh the art's potential and risk losing their audiences through their radical singleness of purpose. They transform experience, in short they make a *difference.*

Such works result from one person, usually a director, pursuing an idea with a fascistic insistence that nothing matters more than the film. This is one reason Hollywood so rarely creates great works. Studios with a vested interest in keeping audiences infantile force even the best directors to trim their visions. Hollywood's contempt for the audience makes it impossible for a Miklos Janscó, with his disregard for the rules of smooth construction, indifference to sympathetic characterization, hypnotically absorbing camerawork and pessimism about humanity, to work on the scale his epic conception requires.

Staged on a huge canvas, this dramatization of an obscure incident during the Russian Civil War may take place in the Soviet Union, but at one level exists only in the world created by the film itself. Questions of historical or geographic veracity are moot. What matters is the inexorable unwinding of a logic that reveals the casual brutality of human behavior. Yet while the action is grim, what makes the film so powerful is how *beautiful* it is. "The Red and the White" is full of haunting, unforgettable moments, such as a dance in the forest by nurses commandeered to perform for a White Russian officer, or the shots of mounted Red cavalry fleeing a White bi-plane, or the bitter irony of witnessing the execution of a Cossack for an offense far less serious than those we have seen him commit. All of these moments are exquisitely, but quickly staged, the camera gliding by almost indifferently, as if barely interested in them.

It is tempting to suggest that the DVD's producers are barely interested in them either, since the transfer is at best acceptable. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend that if you are even remotely interested in the film that you buy the DVD without hesitation. Quite apart from the likelihood that it will quickly go out of print, it is rare indeed to be able to support such singularly epic visions, to prove to anyone interested in listening that audiences can, in fact, respond positively when treated as adults.

Rating:
Summary: Buy it now
Review: Great films like "The Red and the White" stun and overpower us into forgetting every other movie we have seen. They don't cater to our prejudices, they don't flatter us into feeling good about ourselves. They refresh the art's potential and risk losing their audiences through their radical singleness of purpose. They transform experience, in short they make a *difference.*

Such works result from one person, usually a director, pursuing an idea with a fascistic insistence that nothing matters more than the film. This is one reason Hollywood so rarely creates great works. Studios with a vested interest in keeping audiences infantile force even the best directors to trim their visions. Hollywood's contempt for the audience makes it impossible for a Miklos Janscó, with his disregard for the rules of smooth construction, indifference to sympathetic characterization, hypnotically absorbing camerawork and pessimism about humanity, to work on the scale his epic conception requires.

Staged on a huge canvas, this dramatization of an obscure incident during the Russian Civil War may take place in the Soviet Union, but at one level exists only in the world created by the film itself. Questions of historical or geographic veracity are moot. What matters is the inexorable unwinding of a logic that reveals the casual brutality of human behavior. Yet while the action is grim, what makes the film so powerful is how *beautiful* it is. "The Red and the White" is full of haunting, unforgettable moments, such as a dance in the forest by nurses commandeered to perform for a White Russian officer, or the shots of mounted Red cavalry fleeing a White bi-plane, or the bitter irony of witnessing the execution of a Cossack for an offense far less serious than those we have seen him commit. All of these moments are exquisitely, but quickly staged, the camera gliding by almost indifferently, as if barely interested in them.

It is tempting to suggest that the DVD's producers are barely interested in them either, since the transfer is at best acceptable. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend that if you are even remotely interested in the film that you buy the DVD without hesitation. Quite apart from the likelihood that it will quickly go out of print, it is rare indeed to be able to support such singularly epic visions, to prove to anyone interested in listening that audiences can, in fact, respond positively when treated as adults.

Rating:
Summary: Vast and breathtaking
Review: Like Ingmar Bergman's amazing film "Shame" (produced in the same year as "The Red and the White", 1968), Miklos Jancsó's masterpiece evokes the vast and breathtaking panaroma of civil war on a small scale. No crashing, thundering armies here, and no heroes -- just murder on both sides. No plot, no easy resolution, no ideology -- just the tension and menace of a venomous snake uncoiling in the sun.

At the center of the movie is a group of Hungarian volunteers who have come to Russia to fight for the Bolsheviks, either in 1919 or 1920. Caught in an abandoned monastery by a battalion of the counter-revolutionary, pro-Tsarist White Army, the Hungarians are let loose, in an apparent gesture of mercy, then hunted down while they scramble along the banks of the Volga futilely trying to escape. No mercy is shown to anyone on either side. Some of the Hungarians eventually meet up with a Red Army battalion, which is wiped out in a quixotic, unforgettable mini-battle with the Whites along the river. From beginning to end, Jancsó squeezes every last drop of "beauty" out of war. Moreover, his refusal to romanticize the Bolshevik struggle in the Russian Revolution led to this film being banned by the Soviets for years.

Visually, "The Red and the White" is absolute eye candy. Jancsó's genius, like Bergman's, is that he recognized the value of silence. As E.E. Cummings put it, "Nothing can surpass the mystery of stillness." There are whole scenes of this movie where the crickets and the grass say more than the people involved. And arguably, the Volga is a major figure in the film, the spectacular and flowing symbol of Mother Russia, a snake more lasting than violence and one that will outlive every blood-letting combatant her banks.

This is a dreamy and labyrinthine masterpiece. Get it. Five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Vast and breathtaking
Review: Like Ingmar Bergman's amazing film "Shame" (produced in the same year as "The Red and the White", 1968), Miklos Jancsó's masterpiece evokes the vast and breathtaking panaroma of civil war on a small scale. No crashing, thundering armies here, and no heroes -- just murder on both sides. No plot, no easy resolution, no ideology -- just the tension and menace of a venomous snake uncoiling in the sun.

At the center of the movie is a group of Hungarian volunteers who have come to Russia to fight for the Bolsheviks, either in 1919 or 1920. Caught in an abandoned monastery by a battalion of the counter-revolutionary, pro-Tsarist White Army, the Hungarians are let loose, in an apparent gesture of mercy, then hunted down while they scramble along the banks of the Volga futilely trying to escape. No mercy is shown to anyone on either side. Some of the Hungarians eventually meet up with a Red Army battalion, which is wiped out in a quixotic, unforgettable mini-battle with the Whites along the river. From beginning to end, Jancsó squeezes every last drop of "beauty" out of war. Moreover, his refusal to romanticize the Bolshevik struggle in the Russian Revolution led to this film being banned by the Soviets for years.

Visually, "The Red and the White" is absolute eye candy. Jancsó's genius, like Bergman's, is that he recognized the value of silence. As E.E. Cummings put it, "Nothing can surpass the mystery of stillness." There are whole scenes of this movie where the crickets and the grass say more than the people involved. And arguably, the Volga is a major figure in the film, the spectacular and flowing symbol of Mother Russia, a snake more lasting than violence and one that will outlive every blood-letting combatant her banks.

This is a dreamy and labyrinthine masterpiece. Get it. Five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Unconventional, and a Must See
Review: The first time I saw "The Red And The White" I lost track of the story. The "problem" with this film is that it is not a drama with a focus on character, simply a collection of sequences in a day of fighting. It was disorienting and I wasn't prepared for it. But I was intrigued by the idea, so a year later later I watched it again.

And I'm glad I did.

The second viewing is a real eye-opener. This film is simply extrodinary. Everything that disoriented me the first time, became a feature the second time. "The Red And The White" is one of the most fascinating and unconventional films I have ever seen.

The story involves the attempts by both Red and White Russian armies to hold a monastery during the Russian Civil war. It is told through a series of seemingly simple tracking shots, long takes that pass gently and slowly over the endless Russian landscape. People pass through these frames, on horseback, running, walking, marching, some floating to their destiny -- some we recognize from previous shots but most we will never see again.

Most conventional narrative begins with a point-of-view -- a decription of an event, made relevant by the personal drama of one of the participants. Jansco avoids this almost entirely by using his long takes and graceful tracking shots to capture a geography within which these events occur. How we interpret the actions of those we see is up to us. We aren't participating, simply observing.

There is drama, but not in the conventional sense. Instead of the standard scripted conversations, we hear snippets of arguments: nurses who refuse to seperate their patients by army; a Hungarian who refuses to shoot prisoners; a General organising a massacre. If it wasn't for the flawless tracking shots and perfectly timed framing, I would think it was a documentary. In this world the camera seems indifferent to it's subjects, as if simply recording a series of events. The deaths of hundreds don't appear to be any more significant in the frame than the landscape itself; they are just faces who pass us by. Some of them (the soldier who captures the horse; the nurse who is trapped into cooperating, the soldier who leaps to his death in a masterful -- and rare -- moment of editing), we recognise. But we don't know them. None of them have names. While people in the foreground stand waiting for their fate to be decided, a hundred soldiers march across a distant hill, the cavalry charges, gunfire is heard; our attention is distracted by the actions of distant figures. When we look back to the forground the people are gone.

We don't know them, we will never see them again. But now Jansco's cold hearted camera has made us a witness.

It didn't occur to me until days later, but this is probably what a UN Observer feels like.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Unconventional, and a Must See
Review: The first time I saw "The Red And The White" I lost track of the story. The "problem" with this film is that it is not a drama with a focus on character, simply a collection of sequences in a day of fighting. It was disorienting and I wasn't prepared for it. But I was intrigued by the idea, so a year later later I watched it again.

And I'm glad I did.

The second viewing is a real eye-opener. This film is simply extrodinary. Everything that disoriented me the first time, became a feature the second time. "The Red And The White" is one of the most fascinating and unconventional films I have ever seen.

The story involves the attempts by both Red and White Russian armies to hold a monastery during the Russian Civil war. It is told through a series of seemingly simple tracking shots, long takes that pass gently and slowly over the endless Russian landscape. People pass through these frames, on horseback, running, walking, marching, some floating to their destiny -- some we recognize from previous shots but most we will never see again.

Most conventional narrative begins with a point-of-view -- a decription of an event, made relevant by the personal drama of one of the participants. Jansco avoids this almost entirely by using his long takes and graceful tracking shots to capture a geography within which these events occur. How we interpret the actions of those we see is up to us. We aren't participating, simply observing.

There is drama, but not in the conventional sense. Instead of the standard scripted conversations, we hear snippets of arguments: nurses who refuse to seperate their patients by army; a Hungarian who refuses to shoot prisoners; a General organising a massacre. If it wasn't for the flawless tracking shots and perfectly timed framing, I would think it was a documentary. In this world the camera seems indifferent to it's subjects, as if simply recording a series of events. The deaths of hundreds don't appear to be any more significant in the frame than the landscape itself; they are just faces who pass us by. Some of them (the soldier who captures the horse; the nurse who is trapped into cooperating, the soldier who leaps to his death in a masterful -- and rare -- moment of editing), we recognise. But we don't know them. None of them have names. While people in the foreground stand waiting for their fate to be decided, a hundred soldiers march across a distant hill, the cavalry charges, gunfire is heard; our attention is distracted by the actions of distant figures. When we look back to the forground the people are gone.

We don't know them, we will never see them again. But now Jansco's cold hearted camera has made us a witness.

It didn't occur to me until days later, but this is probably what a UN Observer feels like.

Rating:
Summary: Soviet Film-making at its Best
Review: The Red and the White is unquestionably the best piece of Soviet film-making in the post-Eisenstein era. The cinematography beggars belief - long tracking shots that bring in three or more separate narrative motifs in one take, and a narrative that is carried forward by sheer visual momentum rather than dialogue or literary device.

Generally viewed as subversive, The Red and the White problematizes the conflict of the post-Revolutionary Civil War without departing from symbolic archetypes of heroic Reds and barbaric, revanchist Whites. The point is arguable, but the film's politics are at best ambiguous.

Its artistry, by contrast, is not. This is the sort of film the widescreen format is designed for: it becomes incomprehensible without the original picture ratio. This transfer is generally crisp, though the breaks between the original reels are muddy and obtrusive and one loses small, but occasionally important, bits of picture at both right and left ends of the screen; despite which, no film collection of any substance can afford to do without this.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Portrayal of War as Madness
Review: This is a beautifully shot and sparse film that is filled with long takes reminiscent of the Russian Tarkovsky. The topic deals with the Russian revolution and the madness it spawned in warfare, namely from the Hungarian point of view, whose volunteers numbered some 48,000. It is difficult to understand what motived each character, for people are shot indiscriminately, they are freed in just the same manner and that is the nature of battle in this intense artistic film. The ending is one of the most cinematic moments ever, for those looking for a film with battles, this is not it, it's more visual.....



Rating:
Summary: Excellent but you need to know the history to appreciate it!
Review: This movie kept me at the edge of my seat the whole film! The reason being, prior to viewing the movie I had read quite a bit on the Russian Civil War and I knew more or less what to expect (mass executions, no mercy given to either side, etc.). On a whole the film appears historically accurate. However, I found some parts hard to believe. The "cat and mouse" scene strikes me as being highly unlikely because the White Army was advancing on Moscow - they had little time to chase prisoners (which they had just released!) all over the countryside. Not to mention it made no sense to waste ammunition (especially grenades) in that pursuit, because such supplies were very limited and needed to be conserved. Other than that, at an aesthetic level, it is a very beautiful film. The shots are crisp and the rolling countrysides are amazing to take in (even though the film is in black and white!). Also, they did a great job with the dress for both sides - the Whites with their clean officer uniforms and the Reds with their mismatched papakha outfits. Great for the military modeler or wargamer! The film ended somewhat abruptly, but if you think about it, you know how the rest of the story goes, so it ends up being anti-climactic in a way. It does however leave you longing for a Red and the White II, complete with large battle scenes and, of course, more action.