The Big Red One

Samuel Fuller, USA 1980, 111 minutes

The Big Red One is where several of the films in our season meet. It stars Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou) and Stephane Audaran (Babettes Feast) as troops in the American First Infantry Division in World War 2. The film also stars Mark Hamill in one of his few successful roles other than those as Luke Skywalker.

Sergeant (Lee Marvin) is an experienced, cool, professional sergeant with none of the clichés of Hollywood bravado. Sergeant first serves in the US army at the end of the First World War and continues into the Second World War, leading his troops through Europe and Africa.

The plot of this film has been based on the First Infantry Division's history and has lots of anecdotes that switch from beauty to brutality. Watch out for two particular scenes where the inmates of an asylum start clapping when the bombing starts, and a young concentration camp internee dies as a soldier plays piggy back with him. These images remain long after the closing credits.

It must be said that if you are expecting an "Americans kicking German butt" film with little to go away with, think again. The Big Red One is bleakly filmed and communicates strong emotion.

The Big Red One would have been a bigger box office success if it had been released a few years later, after a surfeit of war films had eliminated the negative depiction of soldiers left over from Vietnam war propaganda.

In my personal opinion The Big Red One is better than any of Marvin's other war movies, including his dirty dozen films. Another "must see" film, if not only just to watch Mark Hamill with a pistol rather than a lightsaber.

Review by Mark Bauer
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98