Reed: Insurgent Mexico

The fine debut feature of Paul Leduc, director of Frida (also screening in this retrospective), dramatizes American journalist John Reed’s accounts of the Mexican Revolution. Reed, a noted communist, would later become world famous for Ten Days That Shook the World, his reporting of the Russian Revolution; actor-director Warren Beatty played him in Reds. Leduc’s sepia-tinted movie casts Mexican actor Claudio Obregón in the lead, and recounts the Reed’s adventures with Pancho Villa’s army in the winter of 1913-14. The film won the Prix Georges Sadoul, a French honour given to distinguished first or second features. “The strength of Leduc’s dramatized reconstruction lies in its authenticity (the sepia wash is suitably appropriate) and its refusal to indulge in myth-making. Instead, the struggle is presented in terms of the people involved, and reflected in Reed’s own crisis of conscience and gradual commitment to the uprising” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). “An unusual example of rhetoric-free filmmaking . . . with unusual sensitivity and depth” (Don Druker, Chicago Reader). “The depiction of his passionate romance with communism is far more memorable than anything Warren Beatty could muster in Reds” (Desson Thomson, Washington Post). B&W, DVCAM video, in Spanish with English subtitles. 124 mins.