The Red Badge of Courage

Henry Fleming is a young Union volunteer in the American Civil War. He went to war to prove his courage. In the first engagement fear takes him and he runs. Learning that his unit actually won, shame leads him to tell his friends he was wounded. In the next assault he is given the flag to carry, and this time what he has to carry is not his fear but the lie he told about himself. John Huston's film adapts Stephen Crane's novel of 1895. The narrative builds war not through heroism but through the ordinariness of fear; even Henry's finding of courage is shown less as a revelation than as an accident. Audie Murphy takes the lead; he was the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War and here plays the man who runs. After poor previews MGM cut the film to roughly sixty-nine minutes; the excised material was lost and the original cut does not exist today. Who it's for: Viewers who like classic Hollywood war films, novel adaptations, and Huston. Who it's not for: The surviving cut is disjointed and the characters feel unfinished. The narration also explains too much.