The Red Badge of Courage

Psychological study of an untried young Union soldier who panics in his first encounter with the enemy but regains his courage and emerges a hero. Based on Stephen Crane's novel. Screenplay by John Huston.

John Huston's The Red Badge of Courage, like Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, is a heartbreakingly beautiful film mutilated by its studio after a disastrous preview process. You can--and should--read the fascinating production history in Lillian Ross's Picture. Picture is a classic--and so's the movie, even in a 69-minute reduction featuring a climactic Civil War battle that has Stephen Crane's young hero wearing his red badge of courage, then not wearing it, then wearing it again (MGM editor-in-chief Margaret Booth recut two different battles into one). Most-decorated-soldier-of-WWII Audie Murphy was chosen to star ("a gentle little killer," Huston mused); the shadow of WWII is also felt in the casting of war-front chronicler Bill Mauldin as Murphy's pal, and in Huston's own experience making his great battlefield documentary San Pietro. The panoramas evoke Mathew Brady, and Huston's closeup framing brings a psychoanalytic intensity to the terrified young soldier's inner turmoil. --Richard T. Jameson