The Big Red One: The Reconstruction is director Samuel Fuller’s (Fixed Bayonets, The Steel Helmet, Merrill’s Marauders) autobiographical account of his experiences with the legendary 1st U.S. infantry division during World War II. Lee Marvin leads the cast of raw recruits which includes Griff (Mark Hamill, fresh from success in Star Wars), Zab (Robert Carradine, who serves as Fuller’s surrogate and the film’s narrator), Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), Kaiser (Perry Lang), and Johnson (Kelly Ward).
This version of the 1980 film was released several years following Fuller’s death in 1997 as a tribute to his lasting work and the version he intended audiences to see. When this restored and augmented version was released in early 2005, I was overjoyed to see the original forty seven minutes, which Fuller was forced to cut by the Warner Bros. executives, restored to the film. It definitely makes for a more compelling film and adds depth to the characters.
The Big Red One opens in November 1918 as the guns fall silent on the Western Front in France during World War I. Lee Marvin’s character begins his military career as a private who outlasts the first world war only to find himself, twenty five years later, fighting once again on the battlefields of North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. The film serves as a combat diary of Marvin and his rifle squad of young, inexperienced boys who fast become hardened soldiers.
