32 BIG RED ONE, THE
Plot Summary
A boldface title added to the 2004 version reads: “This is a fictional life based on
factual death.” The film then begins in black and white on 11 November 1918
(Armistice Day, World War I). A private (Lee Marvin) kills a German soldier who
walked toward him in a pose of surrender. Back at his headquarters, the private, a
member of the 1st Division, is informed that the “war’s been over for four hours.”
The film then shifts ahead to November 1942, when the same man, now a ser-
geant in the “Big Red One,” leads his five- man rifle squad (1st Platoon, I Com pany
of the 3rd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment) through Northern Africa. Over the
next two years the squad fights in Sicily, storms Omaha Beach at D- Day, and helps
to liberate France (even battling Germans garrisoned inside a mental asylum with
the unsolicited help of a mental patient who commandeers a machine gun and iron-
ically declares himself “sane” and therefore qualified to fight). The squad also
takes part in the invasion of Germany and the liberation of one of the Nazi death
camps at war’s end. Si mul ta neously, the sergeant’s German counterpart, a noncom-
missioned officer (NCO) named Schroeder (Siegfried Rauch), fights in the same
skirmishes from the other side, showing unending loyalty to his country and to
Hitler. As the American forces continue across France, the unit passes the spot
where the sergeant killed the conceding German soldier 26 years earlier. A First
World War monument now stands at the site, and Pvt. Johnson (Kelly Ward) naively
mistakes it for a newly minted WWII memorial— a bitter irony not lost on the ser-
geant. The unit concludes its tour with the liberation of the Falkenau concentra-
tion camp. Afterwards, Schroeder surprises the sergeant in the woods at night in
an attempt to surrender. The sergeant, having just buried a small child released
from the concentration camp, stabs Schroeder. The sergeant’s unit arrives, inform-
ing him that the war was over “about four hours ago.” As the squad leaves the area,
Pvt. Griff (Mark Hamill) sees that Schroeder is alive. The sergeant and his unit
then scramble to save the German soldier’s life on their way back to camp.Reception
The Big Red One premiered at the 33rd Cannes Film Festival in May 1980 and was
released in the United States on 18 July. For a film that had been drastically abridged
in the editing pro cess and consigned to limited distribution, it did quite well at
the box office ($7.2 million gross) and elicited glowing critical notices. For exam-
ple, the anonymous reviewer for Variety called it “a terrific war yarn, a picture of
palpable raw power which manages both intense intimacy and great scope at the
same time” (31 December 1979). Vincent Canby also offered praise: “The movie’s
battle footage is mostly small- scale but terrifically effective, especially in a sequence
devoted to the 1944 landings at Omaha Beach in Normandy, which is as good as
anything in The Longest Day. Mr. Fuller’s characters aren’t very in ter est ing but, in
this case, banality has a point. These really are ordinary guys and not the wildly
representative ones seen in most Hollywood war movies. More impor tant, one is
always aware of the soldiers’ sense of isolation even in the midst of battle and of
the endlessness of their task. If they survive one battle, their only reward is to be
able to fight another” (Canby, 1980). In his posthumously published memoirs,