Bitter Victory (1957)

From my favorite movies..

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Apart from acting performances I couldn't find many redeeming qualities in "Bitter Victory", and WWII movie about British troops in North Africa. The story revolves around Burton and Roman who were once lovers, and her husband, Curt Jergens. The two men are selected for a secret mission led by Jergens, who lacks courage to do what's necessary and is mocked by Burton throughout the picture.It is an action picture but descends into a clash of minds and temperaments at the expense of tension and suspense. It is one of Nicholas Ray's poorer directing jobs and the film lacks good set design as well, leaving the viewer to wonder if all production money was spent on the cast. The musical score was tuneless and inappropriate, but in keeping with the overall sub-par nature of the film. Can't recommend it and wished I hadn't wasted the two hours.

Ideally, a movie should make sense on its own terms. It is a bad movie when scenes can only be explained by external logic, by what was going on in the mind of the director or screenwriter. John Ford was once asked, regarding the movie "Stagecoach" (1939), why the Indians chasing the stagecoach didn't just shoot the horses, and his answer was, "Then there wouldn't have been any movie," which was an example of external logic. Actually, he was just being a smart aleck, because he could have said that the Indians wanted to capture the horses alive, which would have made sense, and more importantly, would have made the scene explicable in terms of internal logic alone.A big problem with "Bitter Victory" is that too much of what happens in the movie is explicable only in terms of external logic. Nicholas Ray, the director, had some idea in his head about how things should turn out, which leads to one forced scene after another. The first one occurs when Captain Leith sees Jane sitting at a table in a military night club. No sooner does he recognize her than Major Brand walks up beside him and asks Leith if he would like to meet his wife. What follows is a scene reminiscent of "Casablanca," in which it becomes clear that Leith and Jane were once lovers, and cryptic remarks pass back and forth between them while Brand takes it all in, not understanding the particulars of the remarks but gleaning their general significance nevertheless. Because we have seen this sort of thing before, we question it more than we might have when seeing it for the first time.In other words, the most natural thing for Leith to do when Brand asks him if he wants to meet his wife would be to say, "You mean Jane? I knew Jane before the war. I was just going over to say 'Hi.'" Now, of course they would not admit they had been lovers, but there is no reason for Leith and Jane to deny they even knew each other, especially since their innuendoes make their previous relationship so obvious. By concealing that they knew each other and then making the concealment obvious, they only made things worse. So, why did they do this? Internal logic fails us here, and we are forced to reach for external logic. Ray wanted Brand to find out that Leith and Jane were once secretly lovers so that he would become jealous, and so Ray concocted this hurried, unrealistic scene to that end.After the mission is complete, two men are too injured to walk. Brand tells Leith he will have to stay behind with the wounded men until they die and then catch up with the rest of the men. That makes no sense. If they are going to die anyway, just leave them behind. Furthermore, in a much later scene, Brand reveals his orders, written down on a piece of paper, that their mission is so important that if men are wounded, they are to be left behind. Now it really makes no sense.It gets worse. When Brand tells Leith to stay behind with the wounded, a soldier suggests making stretchers to carry them. Leith dismisses the idea, saying that the men would bleed to death in an hour. Sounds good to me. Carry the men in stretchers for an hour, and then when they die, leave them in the desert. Instead, Leith stays behind with the wounded, and then, after everyone is gone, kills them. Actually, he only kills one of them, because he runs out of bullets. So then he decides to carry the other wounded man all by himself. You see, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher is a bad idea, but tossing him over your shoulder and staggering through the desert is a good idea. Conveniently, the man dies, and Leith is able to catch up with the rest of the men.External logic to the rescue. The purpose of all this absurdity is to establish that Brand wanted Leith to kill the wounded for him, and then hold him responsible for doing so. That would be fine, if that could have been established coherently. But since internal logic fails us here, we have to reach for the director's motivations instead.Then there is the scene at the well. Before anyone takes a drink, someone suggests that the Germans may have poisoned it. To find out whether it is poisoned, Brand takes a swig. It tastes all right, but Leith says it is too soon to tell. So, they leave the well without drinking any of the water. But if they were not going to drink the water regardless of what happened when Brand swallowed some, what was the point of Brand's risking his life by drinking some of it in the first place? This contrivance can only be explained by Ray's desire to show how Brand can be intimidated by his fear that others may think him a coward.When Brand sees a scorpion crawling near Leith's leg during a rest period, he does not warn Leith, hoping that Leith will be bitten. Mokrane sees the scorpion too, but does nothing. After Leith is bitten, Mokrane tries to kill Brand for letting the scorpion bite Leith. But if Mokrane cares so much about Leith, why didn't he just walk over to the scorpion and step on it?Finally, before Leith dies, he asks Brand to tell Jane that she was right and he was wrong. Instead, Brand tells Jane he did not hear what Leith said, but he probably said that he loved her. We know Brand is the sort who would lie about such a thing, but why this particular lie? As with the scorpion scene, I don't think even external logic can make sense of this one.

BITTER VICTORY is a standard WW2 flick that seems to have heavily inspired the Italian run of WW2 movies that came out some ten years later. The bulk of the film is a men-on-a-mission thriller as a group of British soldiers steal some top secret documents from the Nazis and then are forced to flee for their lives into the desert. What follows will surprise nobody watching, as this is very straightforward stuff.What BITTER VICTORY does have going for it is a good cast, headlined by Curd Jurgens (surprisingly playing a Brit) and Richard Burton. The two have a love triangle going on involving Jurgens's wife, so there's a lot of antagonism and even hints at forthcoming murder that helps to drive the movie's conflict. The supporting cast is rounded out by the likes of Nigel Green, Christopher Lee, and Alfred Burke.This film is rather light on action, although the scenes set in Benghazi involving Green's safecracker are well handled. Overall the movie is well shot by American director Nicholas Ray (ON DANGEROUS GROUND), but it lacks quite a bit of suspense considering the premise so it's only middling stuff.

I found this on DVD cheap in a bargain bin and saw a young Burton in a desert WW2 flick, so why not? Well, I'm sorry to say I'm in the minority here and couldn't get into it at all. I guess because I sympathized with the Jurgen's character more then Burton"s! For me the lines were not drawn nearly clear enough That Jurgen's Major was all that incompetent and that Burton's Captain all that outstanding. On top of that the love interest between the two seemed pretty unbelievable to have been all that wanted by a young Burton, she looks kind of old maid'ish to me, and definitely is not at all loyal to her husband in any scene. In the end I was much more sympathetic to Jurgen's then I was a rogue Burton looking to break up a war time marriage to a fellow officer. I also have a military background and I guess I feel a strong loyalty to senior officers (thats what makes a military work), I've actually been in a bit of wartime drama myself and stuck by my CO against an upstart enlisted person who was totally out of line in a war zone making many accusations that when asked my opinion later on by myself, I stuck by my CO, but in this movie I didn't get any of that same tension. I'll say that those guys were pretty stupid on the raid, blowing up a working jeep in the desert? C'mon! Your on a raid alone, you use the resources you have! They also shot or let escape two horses, I just couldn't get into it with any type of tension. In other words, boring! They give a DSO later on the spot? In The box? Without pinning it on? Give me a break! Also, when I saw on the DVD cover Jurgen's, I assumed he would play a German nemesis to Burton, wrong! I mean he is totally miscast as a fellow British officer (South African, Afrikaner) but I mean he doesn't have the typical accent to even achieve that, does he? Just a final note, Johnny Guitar is one of my all time favorite movies, I did not buy this disc based on it being a Ray made movie, I bought it for Burton and on a whim because it was cheap, I want to point out one quote that I saw of some of my all time favorite war movies and my view in reflection,quote: "Those who have enjoyed ATTACK, HELL IS FOR HEROES, THE BIG RED ONE and particularly Anthony Mann's brilliant MEN IN WAR are well advised to check this out,". My input is if you got this far in my feelings upon watching "Bitter Victory" is pass unless it's on cable and then check it out for free; 6 of 10 out of respect for those who love this movie, it does try to go were not many war movies went in 1957 (I actually think it rates lower like a 5/10).