The Red And The White - Csillagosok, Katonak [1967] [DVD]

'The Red and the White' is described as a war film unlike any other - which is fair enough, though I'd say there are elements shared with such films as 'The Birth of a Nation', Gance's 'Napoleon', 'No Man's Land', 'Come and See' & 'Fires on the Plain.' Jancso was affected by World War II and chose with this film to explore the civil war aspect of the Russian Revolution - meaning that it was one of many great artistic works banned by the Soviet Union. The plot as such is relatively simple - set in 1918 the revolutionary soldiers the Reds fight the counter-revolutionary White Guard. The film can be watched in historical light, or seen perhaps as a wider allegory of war. Like Pasolini's 'Salo' (another relative)it has a very mathematical/theoretical approach towards events - having the icy coldness of Pasolini's final work or the shortly to be reissued 'Come and See.' It certainly puts gung-ho nonsense like 'Saving Private Ryan' in its place. The conclusion of the film shows a vast battlezone, a wonderfully choreographed sequence whose influence is apparent on Martin Scorsese's 'Gangs of New York' and the recent Russian film 'The Russian Ark.' In all, an excellent reissue with fine bonus features and an accompanying booklet that enables people to discover this previously hard to see film.

Set in the Russian Civil War in 1918, the White Czarist forces are locked in battle with the Red Bolsheviks. The film's action follows the remnants of a Hungarian company and the confused fighting which flows around a defrocked monastery and invades the fragile peace of a military hospital. Soldiers shoot, flee, are captured, are shot. From time to time they pose. A military band incongruously emerges from the forest to play a waltz.

Jancso's view of war is of utter confusion, futility, and the sheer impossibility of retaining a moral perspective. Both sides, particularly in a civil war, strive to claim the moral high ground of legitimacy and purpose. Both sides in this film are corrupted by war. The individual, once he loses his shirt, ceases to be a person with an identity - a naked man could be a soldier in either side, or merely a civilian caught up in the fighting. Jancso strips his actors until they become mere pawns - you, as audience, never get a chance to really identify with any of the men, they come and go so quickly.

Only a couple of the nursing staff demonstrate moral insight or question the morality of killing. Even they are compromised by the brutality of the action. In the end, you are left overwhelmed by the pointlessness of it all.

Jancso famously shoots in long scenes and makes expansive use of distance and breadth of camera angle. Made in black and white, "The Red and the White" is a remarkable visual spectacle. Jancso emphasises the scale and confusion of warfare: sometimes troops are visible a couple of miles away down the valley, at other times squadrons of cavalry emerge from a hollow in the ground or from behind a hillock.

And his images of the individual are often captured in longshot, so you see only a distant figure at the centre of the action. It's a style which disassociates you from identifying with the individual while accommodating you to the notion that war takes place on a broad scale, rendering the individual meaningless.

War is absurd, brutal, and utterly chaotic. There is little in the way of plot, little in the way of dialogue, little in the way of characterisation. The abiding message is that war corrupts. The reality of war is not heroism or glory or duty, but physical survival, often at the expense of moral sacrifice.

A very fine, thoroughly absorbing film which is as vivid and relevant as when it was made in 1967-8, and a film which deserves much wider recognition.