--- title: "Reds" year: 1981 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/reds" fi1m_score: 77 critics_score: 69 critics_reviews: 10 published: "2026-09-20T06:21:23.670559+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T06:21:48.093531+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Reds (1981) Directed by Warren Beatty · 3h 15m · MPA PG · Drama, History, Romance **Fi1m score: 77** · Critics 69 from 10 reviews *In a sentence:* A love story in which every row is about the dictatorship of the proletariat and every reconciliation is set to a piano > Warren Beatty’s three-and-a-quarter-hour account of John Reed and Louise Bryant is a proper epic, patient, handsome and honest about how revolutions curdle. It also argues in circles, and its best moments belong to the old people it interviews between scenes. ## Synopsis Portland, Oregon, 1915. John Reed (Warren Beatty), a journalist back from the war in Europe, tells a Liberal Club dinner what the fighting is about: profits. Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton), married to the dentist Paul Trullinger (Nicolas Coster) and writing pieces nobody prints, corners Reed for an interview that runs until morning. He asks her to come to New York; she packs a bag. In Greenwich Village she meets his circle: the editor Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann), the anarchist Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton) and the playwright Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson), who drinks and watches her. Reed wants the revolution and the story; Louise wants her own name on a page. Between scenes, elderly men and women who lived through those years try to remember what happened. ## Review Warren Beatty directs, produces, co-writes with Trevor Griffiths and stars in a 195-minute account of John Reed, the American journalist who watched the Russian Revolution up close and wrote *Ten Days That Shook the World*, and of Louise Bryant, the writer who went with him. It is a love story and a political history and it declines to pick one. We think it is good: a big, serious, well-made film that earns most of its length and wastes some of it. Whether it is for you depends on how you feel about watching two people argue about socialism in a series of well-dressed rooms. Beatty’s best decision was made before the script. He filmed old men and women who knew Reed and Bryant, or lived through the same years, and cut their faces in between the scenes, shot against black, lit from one side, with no names on screen. They disagree about dates, correct one another without ever meeting, and apologise for what they have forgotten. This moved us more than anything in the drama proper: it is history as it is actually kept, in the memories of people who are about to stop remembering. Dede Allen and Craig McKay know how long to hold each face, and it is always a beat longer than is comfortable. Vittorio Storaro shoots America in browns and amber, lamplight and afternoon sun through net curtains, and Russia in grey and white with the red of the banners the only strong colour in the frame. Richard Sylbert fills the Village rooms with manuscripts and unwashed glasses and gives the Bolshevik halls bare walls and long tables. Shirley Russell puts Keaton in hats and high collars she seems to be fighting, and Beatty in soft shirts that make him look younger than everyone he argues with. The rooms tell you what year it is before anyone speaks. Beatty plays Reed as a boy who cannot stop talking, charming, tireless and slightly exhausting, and the film likes him a little more than we did. Keaton has the harder job. For the first hour Louise is written as shrill and unsure, and Keaton plays it honestly, which does not make it pleasant; once the film reaches Petrograd it lets her be the one who sees clearly, and she is superb. Jack Nicholson’s O’Neill is the best thing in it. He sits at the edge of the parties, drinks, says the one true sentence and leaves, and every scene he is in feels as if a sharper writer had passed through. Maureen Stapleton’s Emma Goldman is gruff and unfooled. Edward Herrmann is a kind, tired Max Eastman; Paul Sorvino’s Louis Fraina argues in a fine loud voice; the novelist Jerzy Kosiński plays Grigory Zinoviev with the patience of a man who knows the committee will outlast the idealist. The trouble is the arguments. Reed and Louise fight about her writing, then about his politics, then about her writing again, and by the third round in the second hour we noticed we were restless and looking at the wallpaper. The party meetings back in America, where the left splits into factions over a summer, are careful and interminable, and Beatty and Griffiths never find a way to make a procedural vote play as drama. The Petrograd sequence, in which Allen and McKay cut crowds, speeches and the two of them finding one another to “The Internationale”, is the film at its best, and it shows how much of the rest could have gone. Stephen Sondheim and Dave Grusin share the music. The piano love theme is quiet and a little sad, and it does more for the romance than several of the scenes it plays under; the rest is tactful to the point of vanishing. The tagline compares the film to [*Gone with the Wind*](https://film.one/film/gone-with-the-wind), and against that standard it is a rarity: a costume epic about a revolution that is interested in what the revolutionaries believed and how the belief soured. That it also thinks its hero is wonderful is a smaller fault than it sounds. He may well have been. It breaks naturally around the halfway mark, and at home it tolerates being watched in two sittings; the meetings are easier with a cup of tea. Stay for every old face between the scenes, because they are worth more than any speech in the film. It runs 195 minutes and carries a 15, and we would defend the length up to about the two-and-a-half-hour mark. *Fi1m score 77, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come down in favour of Reds, and the praise clusters in the same places. Nearly every review admires Beatty’s nerve in directing, producing, co-writing and starring in a three-hour film about an American communist, and most think the gamble pays off. The interviews with real witnesses, cut in among the drama, are singled out again and again as the film’s best idea. The performances draw steady approval, with Jack Nicholson’s Eugene O’Neill mentioned more often than any other. The spread is wide, from warm admiration to outright rejection, and the sharpest dissent comes from the release-era reviews. Variety finds it ponderous and lacking any emotional progression; Pauline Kael in The New Yorker thinks it backs away from its own subject. Later reviews are gentler, though Empire and Slant Magazine both find the biopic shape conventional and the running time long, and Slant objects to the ages of the leads. ### Reviews we read (10) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): Ebert praises the film as a romantic epic with intelligence and wit, centering on the personal relationship between John Reed and Louise Bryant amid historical events. He highlights strong performances by Beatty, Keaton, and Nicholson that make the characters engaging and human. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/reds-1981) - **The Guardian** (A–): The film is an engrossing, beautifully filmed and remarkably balanced portrait of a fascinating moment in history. It is cleverly enhanced by the intercutting of real-life documentary interviews and everything a historian could want in a movie. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/may/02/reds-votes-left-warren-beatty) - **Film Comment**, David Thomson (85/100, inferred): The critic views Reds as a courageous, coherent, and ambitious film that restores dignity to the big-budget epic genre. He singles out its intelligent engagement with American history and its reminder of the country's original purpose. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/redtime-milos-forman-ragtime-warren-beatty-reds/) - **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (B+): The critic praises the film's blend of epic scope with naturalistic acting and its use of real interviews with witnesses, noting how it portrays the curdling of revolutionary ideals. They single out the strong supporting performances, especially Jack Nicholson's as Eugene O'Neill. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/reds-1798202076) - **Time Out**, PT (80/100, inferred): The review finds Reds mightily impressive in its creative grasp of the contradictions of epic political cinema and historical representation. It singles out the way the film yokes romance and revolution while using documentary inserts of witnesses alongside a dialectical biopic structure focused on American socialist heritage. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/reds) - **Empire**, Kim Newman (70/100, inferred): The critic admires Beatty's bold ambition in directing, producing, starring in and co-writing this three-hour biopic of radical journalist John Reed and the Russian Revolution, highlighting the effective mix of personal romance and political history. It notes some conventional biopic elements and overlong stretches that make the narrative feel less timeless. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/reds-review/) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (70/100, inferred): Canby admires 'Reds' as an ambitious, flamboyant epic that succeeds where similar films fail, dramatizing a remarkable period in American intellectual history with emotional effect. He notes it is not perfect but excites the imagination through its personal rather than ideological approach. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/06/movies/film-view-why-reds-succeeds-and-ragtime-doesn-t.html) - **Slant Magazine** (50/100, inferred): The review finds the film a handsome but unsatisfying epic, praising the witnesses' interviews and some performances like Nicholson's and Stapleton's, but criticizing the leads' ages, the portrayal of characters, and the overly conventional approach. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/reds-dvd/) - **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (40/100, inferred): Kael finds 'Reds' absorbing due to Beatty's dedication but ultimately not very good, as it backs away from its subject and lacks clarity. She singles out Beatty's touching but overly sentimental performance as a saving grace amid the film's struggles with its material. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/12/21/the-current-cinema-75) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (30/100, inferred): The review calls the film a courageous but ultimately too ponderous attempt to combine socio-political drama with a love story. It praises the intelligent setup of the political and emotional scenes in the first half but criticizes the lack of overall emotional progression and excessive arguments. [Read](https://variety.com/1980/film/reviews/reds-1200424896/) ## Details - **Director:** Warren Beatty - **Director:** Warren Beatty - **Writer:** Warren Beatty, Trevor Griffiths - **Cinematography:** Vittorio Storaro - **Editor:** Dede Allen, Craig McKay - **Music:** Stephen Sondheim, Dave Grusin - **Production design:** Richard Sylbert - **Costume design:** Shirley Russell - **Producer:** Warren Beatty - **Cast:** Warren Beatty as John Reed; Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant; Edward Herrmann as Max Eastman; Jerzy Kosiński as Grigory Zinoviev; Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill; Paul Sorvino as Louis Fraina; Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman; Nicolas Coster as Paul Trullinger - **Runtime:** 3h 15m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 25 December 1981 - **Genres:** Drama, History, Romance - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 1981); [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Nominee, 1981) - **Budget:** $35 million - **Box office:** $40 million ## Where to watch in the US - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $4.99, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $4.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, CA, CH, CZ, DK, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IN, LT, NO, NZ, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - BAFTA Film Awards 1983: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (won); Best Actress in a Supporting Role (won) - Academy Awards 1982: Best Actor (nominated); Best Actress (nominated); Best Costume Design (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Production Design (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (nominated); Best Cinematography (won); Best Director (won); Best Supporting Actress (won) - Golden Globes 1981: Best Director (won) - National Board of Review Award for Best Film 1981: National Board of Review Award for Best Film (won) ## If you liked this - *October* (1928): Eisenstein films the same revolution from the inside, with no love story and no witnesses - *Doctor Zhivago* (1965), Fi1m 70: Lean’s version of Russia in upheaval, all snow and yearning and much less arguing — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/doctor-zhivago.md) - *The Conformist* (1970), Fi1m 87: Storaro lights fascist Italy the way he lights Petrograd here, and it is cold — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-conformist.md) - *Rosa Luxemburg* (1986): Von Trotta on a revolutionary woman whose politics and private life will not stay separate - *Land and Freedom* (1995), Fi1m 83: Loach’s Spanish Civil War film, with the best argument about collectivisation ever put on screen — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/land-and-freedom.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/reds