The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

Official trailer

The Red Badge of Courage exists in two versions, neither of them quite the film John Huston intended to make.

Huston directed it. The studio, MGM, cut the film roughly in half after disastrous preview screenings. The final theatrical version runs sixty-nine minutes and is missing most of Huston’s longer dramatic scenes. Audie Murphy plays Henry Fleming, the young Union soldier whose first experience of combat is the subject of Stephen Crane’s 1895 novel. Bill Mauldin plays Tom Wilson.

Casting Audie Murphy, who in real life was the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War, as a soldier learning what combat does to a person was the choice the film is structured around. MGM’s scissors were vandalism, and what survived them is a mercy. The studio hacked about an hour out of something great, and the sixty-nine minutes left still hit harder than most war films twice the length. Murphy’s face in that first battle is the thing I can’t shake.

Lillian Ross’s book Picture, a long-form New Yorker series about the making of the film, has become more famous than the film itself. The book documents in detail how studio interference destroyed Huston’s intended version. It’s one of the foundational documents of American film criticism and is still worth reading.

The Murphy Casting

Audie Murphy in 1951 was twenty-six years old and had spent five years dealing with what would later be called PTSD from his own war service.

Casting him to play a fictional young man’s first combat experience was a creative decision that paid off in unexpected ways. Murphy plays Fleming’s panic during the first battle with a familiarity that no other actor could have brought. He’d lived it.

Murphy himself was uncomfortable with the role and uncomfortable with his real-life fame.

He continued making films but mostly cheap westerns. His best dramatic work is in this film. He had the talent for a serious career and didn’t get one, partly because the industry didn’t know what to do with him and partly because he didn’t know what to do with himself.

His career story saddens me. On this evidence he could have been a serious dramatic actor, and it’s a pity that nobody, Murphy included, found a way to build on what he does here.

The Studio Interference

Louis B. Mayer hated the film. Dore Schary, the production chief who replaced Mayer as head of MGM, backed it, then oversaw the cutting himself when preview audiences found the film too dark and confusing.

The studio cut Huston’s longer dramatic scenes, added a heroic voice-over narration, and trimmed the runtime to under seventy minutes. What remains is a film with the bones of Huston’s vision and most of the muscle removed.

The original cut has never been recovered. The trimmed footage was reportedly destroyed. What exists now is the studio-imposed version. It’s still good. It’s not the film Huston shot.

Preview audiences found it too dark, so the studio slapped a heroic voice-over onto a film about fear, a travesty. I think the narration does more damage than the missing scenes. I’d give a lot to see Huston’s version without it.

What Survives

The combat sequences are the reason I’d rate it this high.

Huston shot them with documentary attention to confusion and noise. The soldiers don’t know what’s happening, and the lines break, reform and break again. The score stays restrained, and the film looks like a black-and-white photograph from the period coming to life. That was Huston’s stated goal, and he got there.

The cut version preserves the psychological tracking of Fleming’s transformation from terrified boy to combat veteran, even if it’s less developed than Huston intended. The film lets the famous Crane phrase “the red badge of courage,” referring to the wound a soldier earns, land without explanation. It trusts the audience. Nobody stops to explain the title phrase, and the film is better for it. A lesser film would have handed someone a speech about it, and that restraint is exactly what survives the studio’s scissors.

Does The Red Badge of Courage still hold up?

8/10. It’s a damaged great film, and the cut version still beats most contemporary war films.

The combat scenes and Murphy’s frightened face justify the 8 on their own, and the studio’s narration and missing scenes are what keep it from climbing higher. Huston’s intended version would have been a 10, and it drives me crazy that nobody will ever see it. Watch it, then read Lillian Ross’s Picture.

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