Country: USA
Year: 1980
Duration: 159'
rom Tunisia to Sicily, from
Normandy to Belgium, all the way to the horrors of the concentration
camps in Czechoslovakia, this is the story of four American soldiers and
their commander who served in the unit known as "The Big Red One," as
told by one of them, the aspiring author, Zeb. More than twenty years
later, The Big Red One returns in a completely reconstructed version,
with an extra 40 minutes and eight sequences that were missing in the
original version. The material was recuperated starting with the script
and the original director's notes, the sequences that were edited out
and sound tracks belonging to Warner Bros.
"It's all very simple, both the novel and the film, a very simple
design. But instead, everything regarding the characters is very
complicated: nobody knows who the devil is fighting whom, they're
shooting at each other, they're shooting at everybody, the others are
shooting at everybody, the enemy is shooting at us, we're shooting at
the enemy, we're shooting amongst each other […]. Every man is a
nonentity, everybody is destined to total oblivion, even if they
survive." (S. Fuller)
Biography
film director
Samuel Fuller
Samuel Fuller (Worcester, 1911 - Hollywood, 1997) entered the world of cinema in 1936 as a screenwriter. After fighting in WWII, he debuted as a director in 1948 with I Shot Jessie James and, following the success of The Steel Helmet (1950), he signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. In 1952, his film Pickup on the South Street won the Bronze Lion in Venice. In 1956 he began to produce his own films, including Run of the Arrow (1957) and Shock Corridor (1963), which furthered his reputation as an independent filmmaker. His last film was White Dog (1982), a controversial parabola against racism.
FILMOGRAFIA
FILMOGRAFIA ESSENZIALE/ ESSENTIAL FILMOGRAPHY I Shot Jesse James (Ho ucciso Jesse James, 1949), The Baron of Arizona (Il barone dell'Arizona, 1950), The Steel Helmet (Corea in fiamme, 1951), Fixed Bayonets (I figli della gloria, 1951), Parx Row (1952), Pickup on South Street (Mano pericolosa, 1953), Hell and Hight Water (Operazione mistero, 1954), House of Bamboo (La casa di bamboo, 1955), China Gate (La porta della Cina, 1957), Run of the Arrow (La tortura della freccia, 1957), The Crimson Kimono (Il Kimono scarlatto, 1959), Verboten! (Verboren, Forbidden, Proibito, 1959), Underworld U.S.A. (La vendetta del gangster, 1961), Merrill's Marauders (L'urlo della battaglia, 1962), Shock Corridor (Il corridoio della paura, 1963), The Naked Kiss (Il bacio perverso, 1964), The Meanest Men in the West (Quel dannato pugno di uomini, co-Regia Charles S. Dubin, TV, 1967), Shark! (Quattro bastardi per un posto all'inferno, 1969), Tatort - Tote Taube in der Beethovenstraße (Un piccione morto in Beethovenstrasse, TV, 1973), The Big Red One (Il grande uno rosso, 1980), White Dog (Cane bianco, 1982), Les Voleurs de la Nuit (1984), Rua sem Regresso (Strada senza ritorno, 1989).