The Big Red One
All actors and roles (10)
All team (35)
Short description
The Big Red One follows a veteran sergeant of the First World War who leads a squad of young riflemen through the Second World War. Four of them, nicknamed the Four Horsemen, stay with him from the landings in North Africa and Sicily through Normandy, Belgium and France, and finally into Czechoslovakia, where they confront the reality of the camps. Staying alive becomes the squad's purpose as the men move from one front to the next.
Samuel Fuller wrote and directed the film, drawing on his own infantry service. It arrived in 1980, after Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, and before White Dog. Lee Marvin plays the Sergeant, with Mark Hamill as Griff, Robert Carradine as Zab, Bobby Di Cicco as Vinci, Kelly Ward as Johnson and Stéphane Audran as Walloon. Gene Corman produced, and 26 cast members are credited. Made for about 5 million dollars, it took roughly 7 million worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 7.1/10 from 23,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7/10 from 357 votes. A critics' rating of 8.1/10 from 49 reviews is notably higher than either audience figure, suggesting reviewers responded more strongly than general viewers did. The film runs 113 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Most of the film was shot in Israel, and director Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) later admitted that he was always disconcerted when, after filming a scene, German soldiers or SS officers would remove their helmets, revealing yarmulkes underneath. Furthermore, between takes they often sat right on the set in Nazi uniforms, speaking Hebrew or reading the Torah.
- Samuel Fuller arranged a kind of boot camp for the actors involved in the film. Lee Marvin (1924-1987), a former Marine himself, served as an instructor and trained the actors in all the details, down to how to hold and reload a rifle at the same time.
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