Bitter Victory
by Nicholas Ray
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Bushell, Curd J?rgens, Raymond Pellegrin, Richard Burton, Ruth RomanDirector: Nicholas Ray
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language); German (Original Language); Japanese (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-02-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Bitter Victory
Movie Review: NICHOLAS RAY, OPUS 15
Summary: 4 Stars
**** 1957. Based on Ren? Hardy's Bitter Victory, this film was co-written and directed by Nicholas Ray. During WWII, a fearful officer, Curd J?rgens, is told to bring back important documents from a German commanding post. His second officer, Richard Burton, and even his soldiers soon understand he's not fit for the mission. In the desert, tensions grow. BITTER VICTORY is, six years after Flying Leathernecks, the second war movie of Nicholas Ray. The conflict between Curd J?rgens and Richard Burton may sometimes remind us the John Wayne/Robert Ryan disputes but the comparison between the two movies stops here. The desert is after all the main character of BITTER VICTORY, it's a place where men can't cheat and where they don't speak a lot. The scene of the scorpion is a model of the genre, the gazes of the characters at each other being the only dramatic stake of the scene. Highly recommended even if this DVD doesn't offer any valuable bonus and even if the copy, image and sound, is of average quality only.
Summary of Bitter Victory
A World War II drama starring Richard Burton (Academy Award? nomination for Best Actor Equus 1977 and Who s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? 1966) and Curt Jurgens (The Spy Who Loved Me) as Captain Leith and Major Brand a pair of British Army officers assigned to execute a daring commando raid on the Libyan stronghold of General Rommel. Before the mission even begins the tension between the two is evident a situation that is only exacerbated when Brand learns that Leith was once romantically involved with his wife Jane (Ruth Roman TV s Knott s Landing ). Once the operation is underway Brand s cowardice forced Leith to step in and kill a German soldier. This act only adds to Brand s hatred for his second-in-command and as it grows a series of disasters threaten the men and the success of their mission. Who will live who will die and what price honor?System Requirements:Running Time: 102 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: NR UPC: 043396106703 Manufacturer No: 10670Jean-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 Am?re 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 J?rgens and Richard Burton, lead a commando team into the desert to attack a German post. Commander J?rgens doesn't know, but comes to suspect, that his wife (Ruth Roman) and Burton were involved sometime before J?rgens 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
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