8 / 10
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 roughly forty minutes 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 forty minutes 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 thirty-six years old, almost too old for Henry Fleming, and had spent five years dealing with what would later be called PTSD from his actual 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.
For Writers
Real biography can give a performance or a character a foundation that imagination can’t construct. Audie Murphy brings his actual war to Henry Fleming. The audience doesn’t need to know the biography to feel it. The lesson is that casting and character construction benefit from underlying truth. If you have a character who has experienced something, give them an experience that the writer or the reader can recognize as adjacent to real. The unspoken weight reaches the audience.
The Studio Interference
Louis B. Mayer hated the film. Dore Schary, who replaced Mayer as head of MGM, fought to release it but lost the post-production battle 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.
For Writers
A piece of writing belongs to the writer until it doesn’t. Huston lost The Red Badge of Courage to the studio after delivery. The cut version is what survives. The lesson is that creative control is contractual and ends at delivery unless the contract says otherwise. Writers and filmmakers working with companies that own the work need to know what they’ve given away. Sometimes the best version of the work is the one that exists only in the creator’s intended version. The audience will never see 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.
For Writers
Even compromised work can preserve what matters most. The Red Badge of Courage in its current form isn’t the film Huston made. The film’s central argument about what combat does to young men survives anyway because the central scenes were strong enough to outlast the cuts. The lesson is that strong scenes can carry a damaged structure. The work that matters most should be the most carefully built, because it’s the work that will have to hold up if the rest is lost.
Craft Note
John Huston directed and wrote, adapted from Stephen Crane’s 1895 novel. Audie Murphy as Henry Fleming. Bill Mauldin as Tom Wilson. Andy Devine as the cheerful soldier. Royal Dano as the tattered soldier. James Whitmore as the lieutenant. Cinematography by Harold Rosson. Released October 1951. Originally screened at approximately ninety minutes, cut to sixty-nine for general release. Lillian Ross’s New Yorker series, later collected as Picture, documents the production.
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.
