Bitter Victory

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Jean-Luc Godard once famously wrote, "The cinema is Nicholas Ray." Much less famous is the movie that occasioned the observation. Bitter Victory marked Ray's ascension to "auteur" demigod status in France. Unfortunately, American prints ran 20 minutes shorter than the Amère victoire seen in Europe, with the unsurprising result that this enigmatic film--so charged with suppressed desperation and rage, you can hear the neurons snapping--became well-nigh incoherent. It gets worse. The picture, a milestone in the deployment of CinemaScope for emotional subtlety and expressiveness, was dumped to television in a pan-&-scan version that made hash of its compositions and editing rhythm. And that's the only way it was seen, for decades.

The setting is North Africa early in World War II. Two British officers, played by Curd Jürgens and Richard Burton, lead a commando team into the desert to attack a German post. Commander Jürgens doesn't know, but comes to suspect, that his wife (Ruth Roman) and Burton were involved sometime before Jürgens married her. The mission recedes into the background as the tension between the two men builds, and issues of ethics, cowardice, and the legitimacy of wartime killing are thrown into relief against the anvil of the desert. Jurgens was an opaque actor, but Burton etches a searingly modern portrait of an alienated soul whose mordant self-awareness avails him nothing; it's right up there with such Ray-directed landmark performances as James Dean's in Rebel Without a Cause and Humphrey Bogart's in In a Lonely Place. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews:

A tiny anti-war movie with a superb cast........2007-01-04

Richard Burton is at his best in this little war drama.

Unlike his later war movies, and other different ones, he starred in later on, he truly shines as an accomplished actor.

The support of German actor Curt Juergens has been a touch of class.

I won't reveal the contents of the movie, because it has to be watched as is.

Suffice it to say that it is a story about friendship, comraderie and betrayal, not forgetting cowardice.

I can only recommend it.

This is not a true war movie, in the conventional sense of the word, it it far more a story about human relationships during a war, just like "The Hill" by Sidney Lumet and starring Sean Connery and Harry Andrews, this is a social study and much less an actioner.

If you like to go deeper within the human soul, this one is truly yours.

I gave it 4 stars for its present DVD edition. The movie is well worth more, but I get the sensation that something is still missing (not from the movie), something like some interviews and a behind the scenes commentary for instance.

Buy it, it is well worth it.

A real masterpiece!.......2005-02-20

Nicholas Ray makes an impressive tragical portrait of the war looking inside the human soul and not about the outer conditions.

A honor debt will be paid by an officer -Richard Burton- in the middle of the War desert when he involves in a love affair precisely with the wife of his superior.

And Curt Jurgens the cheated husband will find the right time in this case when the revenge assumes his own identity color and metaphorically he can observe himself through this sinister animal.

The final speech is admirable. And the medal will be hanging from a silent scarecrow's is one of the most admirable and original proposals ever made .

A colossal artistic triumph and superb mature film!

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