Movies - The Big Red One

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	Movies - The Big Red One

The Big Red One is a 1980 war film written and directed by Samuel Fuller. The film was heavily cut on its original release, but a restored version was premiered in 2004, some years after Fuller's death.

Fuller saw a great deal of action in World War II as a member of the US First Infantry Division, which was nicknamed The Big Red One for the red "1" on the Division's shoulder patch. The movie attempts to portray the horrors of war as it affects the men on the front lines.

Lee Marvin, (who was wounded and almost killed while fighting in the Pacific during World War II), portrays a character known only as "Sergeant" (though he does refer to himself once as "Sergeant Possum").

The film starts at the end of the First World War with the Sergeant fighting a German. As he fights with the man, the camera moves away from the action and towards a life-size wooden crucifix in the backround. As we get closer we see that while the soldiers are fighting, Christ is rotting.

When Lee returns victorious to his company's headquarters he is told that the war ended hours ago and that the German was trying to surrender when Lee attacked him. Killing versus murder is a theme that repeats throughout the film.

The film cuts to the Sergeant decades later as he leads a squad of men through North Africa, Sicily, then on to the D-Day landings, where The Big Red One lands on Omaha Beach at the start of the Battle of Normandy. The squad then treks though Europe, ending up at the liberation of Falkenau concentration camp (a subcamp of Flossenbürg) in Czechoslovakia. The story's focus is on the four enlisted men (and Lee) who survive the war from beginning to end with their sergeant, becoming known as "The Sergeant's Four Horsemen."

Midway though the film the Sergeant returns to the same field where he stabbed the German decades before:

Johnson: Would you look at how fast they put the names of all our guys who got killed? The Sergeant: That's a World War One memorial. Johnson: But the name's are the same. The Sergeant: They always are.

The battle scenes were generally considered realistic, though some technical details are incorrect, such as the German Panzers actually being Israeli Sherman tanks painted with German insignia, and the low budget and Israeli location is especially evident in the film's portrayal of the Normandy landings. One of the more memorable scenes takes place in a mental hospital complete with throat slashings and inmates walking around unconcerned while fighting rages and romantic music plays. As men are killed, one patient picks up an MP40 submachine gun and begins shooting at everyone in sight, shouting, "I am one of you now! I am sane!...I am sane!".

Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame and Robert Carradine play supporting roles as soldiers under the leadership of the Sergeant.

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Movies - The Big Red One

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