Los rojos y los blancos

"The Red and the White" is not a conventional war movie; it moves at a continuous ceremonious pace, like the melody of a slow march. It creates an atmosphere where time seems suspended, and the situation, for all its violence, changeless; one side gains a victory and captures the other's position, then they in turn are captured, and then the balance shifts back again... There is continual motion, also, as the fighters move to and fro through great spacious natural landscapes, shot in sweeping black-and-white Cinemascope; the feeling for space is the most impressive feature of the movie (I'm sorry to say that this effect only comes through well on the large screen). The abstraction is enhanced by a total lack of "ordinary" conversation, which is usually intended to give the audience a sense of knowing the characters better, even if those characters are totally stereotyped. Here, however, there must be only half-a-dozen lines spoken which are not orders. It's hard to explain why all this should not be highly boring; I guess either you are fascinated by it, or you aren't.

As to the charge of being nothing but propaganda: certainly the Whites are presented in a much more unfavorable light than the Reds; but I don't think we Americans can plead innocent to the charge of demonizing the enemy in war movies. The scenes of atrocities committed by the Whites don't break the tone of the movie, since they are shot in the same calm manner as the rest, and there is no overacting. Most of all, there are no explicit lessons stated, a sure sign of propaganda. If you think this movie is propaganda, you've seen nothing yet; try one of the many Communist-backed films that really are heavy-handed and preachy, like, for example, the East German "Fünf Patronenhülsen", set during the Spanish Civil War.

In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side then the other.

Rather than shooting a hagiographic account of the birth of Soviet Communism, Jancsó produced a profoundly anti-heroic film that depicts the senseless brutality of the Russian Civil War specifically and all armed combat in general. There are no heroes here, just death after death for seemingly no reason.

To no one's surprise, the film was not well received in the Soviet Union, where it was first re-edited to put a more heroic spin on the war for its premiere and then banned. However, in Hungary and the West it was favorably received and had a theatrical release in many countries. It remains one of Jancsó's most widely seen and admired films, although audiences often find it exceedingly difficult to follow because there really is no plot or protagonist.

Besides the clear anti-war message, the film also has some incredible cinematography, with Tamás Somló's camera moving in and out of the action in very fluid motions. It seems very much ahead of its time and calls to mind the much later work of Seamus McGarvey in "Atonement" (2007).

This is the greatest war movie I've ever seen. The two sides are nearly indistinguishable. The tide of advantage goes back and forth, back and forth throughout the movie. Fortunes changes without notice. And at the end, the only thing left to do is raise the sword, salute the cause, and charge straight into death. War is pointless and savage, from first to last. Beautiful filmmaking.

This is a great, great film. It's very unusual and not geared to all tastes. It follows differing groups of soldiers as they fight each other and take prisoners, or evade capture, or hide in villages. There is no plot. You simply follow one group of soldiers until something happens and you follow another group. You feel sympathy for the soldiers; until they commit a heinous act, and you hate them. It's really about the arbitrarious of war and how it reduces men to animals. Not for the faint of heart, it is nonetheless the best antiwar movie I've seen.

Some opinions reproaching this film with 'communist propaganda' strike me as creepily hilarious. Talk about blind determination and immutability in perception - ironically, the very thing that the movie is about after all. I would easily call 'propaganda' every other soviet or east-European war movie from the 1945-1985 period, if you like. Also, every other Hollywood movie that involves a battle scene and The Flag. But surely not this one. How many films show antagonistic parts performing the same tortuous movements of cruelty and murder, in what seems to be a state of mass hypnosis long beyond reason and ethical justification? This film must be one of the most unformulaic and most effective anti-war (i.e. anti-ideological) films ever, along with Elem Klimov's Come and See. The fact that both could be made in the Soviet Union is nothing short of transcendental.