КТО ВЫ, МИСТЕР РИД?

Shouldn't a 'health warning' be supplied?

Guys, I think this film should be supplied with a kind of "health warning". A more inadequate and incompetent 'documentary' I don't remember having seen for a longish time (nor do I wish to see again). While I was watching it, the worst examples of Nazi/Communist propaganda kept coming to mind.

You could start with its name "Who are you, Mr Reed?". This name can't fail to remind you of another well-known old film, "Who are you, Mr. Sorge?" - about a famous Soviet wartime spy - thus suggesting that Dean Reed might've been involved in some spying activities.

And your hunch would not mislead you. Almost the entire film is concerned with speculating on various spy/conspiracy theories involving Dean Reed - without presenting a single shred of evidence to support any of them.

I'll just give you an example:

Interviewee #1:
"Well, Dean Reed came from the USA - he could very well have been a CIA agent then: just think how easy it would have been for him to inconspicuously pass sensitive info to his contacts during photo-signing sessions..."

Should one cry or laugh at this kind of reasoning?

Interviewee #2:
"Well, Reed spent a lot of his time in the USSR - isn't it highly probable that he was recruited by the KGB then?..{nodding knowingly}"

Interviewee #3:
"Dean Reed spent much of his life in the GDR - in all likelihood he was recruited by the Stasi police - don't we all know how powerful and omnipresent it was back then... {nudge, nudge}"

And all the film is like this: just insinuations and innuendo. The film makers have effectively proclaimed Dean Reed to have been "an agent of three intelligence services"! - a standard charge in Stalin's show trials, btw.

If his living relations in the US saw the film, I think they could find a lot to sue the film makers for. I wish they did sue them - if such shabby practices are punished, it might prevent others from following suit.

As for many other episodes in the film they were actually borrowed from earlier well-known films about Dean Reed (like his BAM tour film) - I saw nothing new.

The only new info in the film, for me at least, concerned his Estonian actress girl-friend Ewa Kiwi (or whatever the spelling is), whose child's father he purportedly was. According to her, her schoolboy son virtually worshipped Dean. Well, I'm not surprised. I liked him very much myself when a teenager.

What nettled me most about this film is that, even though many people in the West regarded him as a renegade/traitor, Western films about Dean Reed appear to be more sympathetic to him than this one, made by citizens of a country which Dean Reed used to treat with such warmness and to support against all odds. It seems to me to be so shameless of them.

Nor can I completely ignore the mere technical aspects: The film's called a "documentary" but the only "document" there is a blurry image of an old British newspaper cutting with Reed's highlighted words on it allegedly to the effect that he was going to visit the US soon - which the film authors cite as a plausible reason for the Stasi to want to murder him (in fact, Dean Reed had been visiting his homeland continually). And it was the only document in the entire film.

While the film's finishing lines all but killed me:

"The Stasi archives have been burnt down during pro-democracy disturbances, but in a couple of years' time they will be restored using modern computer technologies..."

or something like this.

Computers restoring documents from ashes. My, my... How far the progress has advanced...

A., Dean Reed Forum, 26.11.2006

По российскому ТВ показывали фильм о тайне смерти Дина Рида. Хотя в нем так и не пролит свет на многие мучающие нас вопросы, можно было увидеть полузабытые кадры выступлений Дина, фрагменты интервью советскому телевидению Ренаты Блюме, Эвы Киви, известного музыкального критика Артемия Троицкого и академика Георгия Арбатова...

Victor, Dean-Reed-guest book, 25.09.2004