The Big Red One (1980)

THE BIG RED ONE (1980) Four stars
When I think of the dumb things college students love to say, I drift back to the History in Film & Fiction class that I took back in 2005 at Pittsburg State.

Boy oh boy, all those undergrads sure did say the dumbest things. (A graduate student like myself would never.)

Like, for example, after we consumed SAVING PRIVATE RYAN around Veterans’ Day.

Were these normally cynical and reserved undergrads all of a sudden turned into Steven Spielberg’s press agents?

Sounded like it.

I mean, for crying out loud, I don’t remember any of those bastards liking the other films we considered that semester or liking at least enough to break on through that cool, detached undergrad reserve.

Several classmates said “SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is the greatest war movie ever made.” One even said, “It’s the only war movie to ever truly care about its characters.” All said with that gleeful, pretentious undergrad enthusiasm.

The first opinion makes you wonder how many war movies they have seen. Probably not that many, either then or now for that matter. Anyway, just say that it’s your favorite and not make that great leap to being an asshole by saying “the greatest.”

The second one makes you wonder how that undergrad history major knew how Spielberg felt about his characters and how that was somehow purer of heart than all the other makers of countless war movies.

For example, makes you wonder how director William Wyler, a World War II veteran, felt about the three veteran characters returning home in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946). Man, oh man, betcha he must have disliked them characters and didn’t care a single lick about them and their plight. Sure, sure, sure, Wyler just did it for the money and the heaps of critical praise, unlike Mr. Spielberg.

We needed a Walter Sobchak in our class that day and he could have pretended the undergrads were all named Donny, especially when they were getting just a wee bit too grandiose in their statements.

“SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is the greatest war movie ever made. …”

“Shut the fuck up, Donny.”

“It’s the only war movie to ever truly care about its characters. …”

“Forget it, Donny, you’re out of your element.”

“SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is the greatest war movie ever made. …”

Jeffrey Lebowski speaks up, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

I am sure that Spielberg would not be guilty of such ridiculous statements as his many unabashed admirers in that Film & Fiction class.

For example, Spielberg and George Lucas grabbed the character name “Short Round” for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM from director Samuel Fuller’s Korean War film THE STEEL HELMET.

You can be sure Spielberg watched Fuller’s World War II epic THE BIG RED ONE before taking on SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Fuller (1912-97) was truly an one-of-a-kind dynamo who lived one helluva life. A screenwriter, a novelist, a reporter, a combat veteran, a World War II survivor, a director, an actor, an inspiration to many. He directed some of the best movies you could ever have the chance to see (I would start with WHITE DOG) and THE BIG RED ONE lives and breathes Fuller.

From his 1980 Cannes Film Festival interview with Roger Ebert, where there’s an audience of a German TV crew and they ask him if THE BIG RED ONE was pro-war or anti-war, Fuller said, “Pro or anti, what the hell difference does it make to the guy who gets his ass shot off? The movie is very simple. It’s a series of combat experiences, and the times of waiting in between. Lee Marvin plays a carpenter of death. The sergeants of this world have been dealing death to young men for 10,000 years. He’s a symbol of all those years and all those sergeants, no matter what their names were or what they called their rank in other languages. That’s why he has no name in the movie.

“The movie deals with death in a way that might be unfamiliar to people who know nothing of war except what they learned in war movies. I believe that fear doesn’t delay death, and so it is fruitless. A guy is hit. So, he’s hit. That’s that. I don’t cry because that guy over there got hit. I cry because I’m gonna get hit next. All that phony heroism is a bunch of baloney when they’re shooting at you. But you have to be honest with a corpse, and that is the emotion that the movie shows rubbing off on four young men.

“I wanted to do the story of a survivor, because all war stories are told by survivors. Pro- or anti-war, that’s immaterial, because in any war picture, you’re going to allegedly feel anti-war because they make a character sympathetic and then the character gets shot, and so you say, ‘How tragic.’ What baloney. Why should I be against war because some kid gets hit while he’s reading a letter from Mom? I don’t think I’ve seen any war movie where you get to know the characters and one of them isn’t killed. It’s a cliche.

“But to the guy who’s killed, try telling him about heroism and courage. Get him to listen after he’s dead. Even World War II, with all its idealism, basically there was a lot of hypocrisy. …”

I could read a Fuller interview all day.

Fuller served in the 1st Infantry Division or “The Big Red One” and he received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart during his service. THE BIG RED ONE’s based on his experiences with Robert Carradine’s Pvt. Zab as Fuller’s alter ego. Fuller sold a gangster novel that he wrote during his military service and in the movie, just like in real life, he finds out that his novel’s been published when he spots a soldier reading it.

Fuller, in his interview with Ebert, said that Carradine’s character is not nearly as vicious as Fuller was in real life.

Zab’s the narrator in THE BIG RED ONE and I just love his narration, both the words themselves (apparently written by Jim McBride) and Carradine’s delivery.

A couple examples: “The Bangalore Torpedo was 50′ long and packed with 85 pounds of TNT and you assembled it along the way. By hand. I’d love to meet the asshole who invented it.”

Example No. 2: “These Sicilian women cooked us a terrific meal. It’s too bad they were all over 50. We were more horny than we were hungry.”

Those are words you could find yourself saying.

Our four privates are Zab, Griff (Mark Hamill), Vinci (Bobby DiCicco), and Johnson (Kelly Ward), and they all do bang-up jobs. It’s especially nice seeing Hamill in a live-action role outside Luke Skywalker.

In the long run, though, THE BIG RED ONE belongs to Lee Marvin as The Sergeant.

You could just say that Marvin was born to play this role.

He’s one gruff son-of-a-bitch and he’s lovable because of it.

Marvin’s delivery and Fuller’s dialogue are a match made in heaven.

Check out this conversation and try and imagine Marvin saying it as The Sergeant.

Griff: I can’t murder anybody.

The Sergeant: We don’t murder; we kill.

Griff: It’s the same thing.

The Sergeant: The hell it is, Griff. You don’t murder animals; you kill ’em.

THE BIG RED ONE marked Fuller’s return to directing after 11 years, with THE SHARK from 1969 his previous credited film, and it was to be his grand epic.

Fuller originally submitted a 4-hour cut and then a 2-hour cut, and both were rejected, of course, by the studio.

The studio reedited the film and tacked on the narration, but still in any form, THE BIG RED ONE packs a wallop and it’s one of the best war movies out there.