Witnesses
"The most evocative aspect of the presentation is a documentary enhancement – interviews with a number of venerable 'witnesses,' whose recollections of the period help to set the scene, bridge transitions and preserve a touching human perspective," wrote The Washington Post. "More than anything else in Reds, these interviews give the film its poignant point of view and separate it from all other romantic adventure films ever made," wrote New York Times film critic Vincent Canby.
To gain perspective on the lives of Reed and Bryant, Beatty began filming the "witnesses" as early as 1971. Some of them are very well known, others less so. As well as their being listed in the opening credits, American Film magazine identified the witnesses in its March 1982 issue.
- Jacob Bailin, labor organizer
- Roger Nash Baldwin, founder, American Civil Liberties Union
- John Ballato, early socialist
- Harry Carlisle, writer, teacher
- Kenneth Chamberlain, political cartoonist for the Masses
- Andrew Dasburg, painter
- Tess Davis, cousin of Louise Bryant's first husband
- Will Durant, historian
- Blanche Hays Fagen, with Provincetown Players
- Hamilton Fish, Congressman, Harvard classmate of John Reed
- Dorothy Frooks, "Recruiting girl," World War I
- Hugo Gellert, artist for the Masses
- Emmanuel Herbert, student in Petrograd, 1917–18
- George Jessel, entertainer
- Oleg Kerensky, son of Alexander Kerensky
- Isaac Don Levine, journalist, translator for Reed
- Arthur Mayer, film historian, Harvard classmate of Reed
- Henry Miller, novelist
- Adele Nathan, with Provincetown Players
- Scott Nearing, sociologist, pacifist
- Dora Russell, delegate to Comintern
- Adela Rogers St. Johns, journalist
- George Seldes, U.S. journalist in Moscow
- Art Shields, political activist
- Jessica Smith, political activist
- Arne Swabeck, member, Communist Labor Party
- Bernadine Szold-Fritz, journalist
- Galina von Meck, witness to Russian Revolution
- Heaton Vorse, son of a Provincetown playwright
- Will Weinstone,organizer, U.S. Communist Party
- Rebecca West, feminist, author
- Lucita Williams, wife of a Lenin biographer
Read more about this topic: Reds (film)
Famous quotes containing the word witnesses:
“Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“My tendency to nervousness in my younger days, in view of the fact of a number of near relatives on both my father’s and mother’s side of the house having become insane, gave some serious uneasiness. I made up my mind to overcome it.... In the cross-examination of witnesses before a crowded court-house ... I soon found I could control myself even in the worst of testing cases. Finally, in battle.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true. “And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth.””
—Ted Sherdeman. Gordon Douglas. Dr. Medford (Edmund Gwenn)