Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31694 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-04
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 69 minutes

Customer Reviews

Frightened Boys at War
A terrific film, worth buying a multi-region player for. It suffered initial controversy for being seen as unpatriotic and cowardly. Studio censorship and constant re-editing probably removed John Huston's convincing film from the 'Masterpiece' category.

The characters and language are believeable, so are the action scenes. Low budget, no blood and gore, but watch out for the death of the 'tall' soldier, Jim, one of the most powerful, touching death scenes ever put on film.

An interesting point concerns the main character Henry, played by B movie star, Audie Murphy. Henry is an inexperienced, frightened youth, who deserts and later rejoins the battle to find his personal courage. Murphy, on the other hand, was the most decorated American soldier of WW2. According to his citations, his leadership and bravery were astonishing. This real life 'baby faced' soldier put the film exploits of Sly Stallone and Clint Eastwood to shame.

95 MINUTE VERSION!!!!!
"Red Badge Of Courage" was a film destined to fail from its inception. Louis B. Mayer never wanted the picture to be made and did what he could to discourage the process. He felt it could never be a commercial success without female characters or established stars. Mayer expressed his views directly to John Huston, he said, "It has no story and won't make a cent!"

When the film was finally completed, the test screenings were a failure. Houston remarked: "With the Red Badge of Courage, I quite understood at the time why they took the steps they did. I was present at a preview when damn near a third of the audience got up and walked out of the theatre."

Various edits were tried without the participation of Huston, who was working on the "African Queen" with Bogart and Hepburn, and seemed to not give a damn. All that resulted was a picture that got shorter and shorter. The final release version is 69 minutes. The original cut was of 95 minutes, not two hours as has been suggested.

"...they cut out one scene that was probably the best in the picture, in a way of anticlimax. The monumental death of the tall soldier. The boy and the tattered soldier walk away down the hill, and the tattered fellow says, "I've never seen a feller die like that." He begins to ramble and begins to walk around in circles then dies himself. This was the most extraordinary moment in the picture as far as I was concerned. It wouldn't have made any difference so far as the audience was concerned. They still walked out in the middle of the picture."

The footage that was extracted was from the master negative. It was discarded to the floor of the editing suite and thrown away as useless. There are no records of any of the cut scenes or extra footage surviving.

Louis B. Mayer dispatched a second unit to Huston's ranch. The second unit was to film the battle scenes in Technicolor using the Cinematographic process: MGM Camera 65. Louis B. Mayer, at his most vindictive, shot footage that would eventually be used in future productions with the full knowledge of Huston.

As the problems mounted, Huston's enthusiasm for the project waned and he started to gravitate towards his next project. Huston never re-visited "Red Badge Of Courage". It is assumed he was never happy with the film in its original form or its release version and was happy for the film to fade into annals of film history.