Reds

Warren Beatty is the star, producer, director and co-writer in this political super-production that is unusual for Hollywood. Made in the neoconservative America of Ronald Reagan and with $42 million from the multinational Gulf and Western (the parent company of Paramount Pictures), Beatty crafted this historical reconstruction of more than three hours with the subject of love and romance on the barricades of the cultural and social revolution in Greenwich Village and later the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. In the foreground is the off-and-on romance between John Reed (Beatty), the radical journalist who became the reporter of the October Revolution, and the emancipated activist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). On the fiercely dramatic backdrop, there is the socially troubled ferment in America during the first quarter of last century and the revolutionary glow in Russia.