Film Review
Bitter Victory is Nicholas
Ray's
Heart of Darkness.
The most resoundingly pessimistic of his films it makes an unbearably
grim assessment of human nature, with a directness and restraint that
are typical of Ray.
The film was adapted from the René
Hardy's French novel
Amère
victoire and is anything but a conventional war film. It
would be so easy to pin the epithet 'anti-war film' on it but this is
far too simplistic and fails to do justice to the film's
complexity. (Ray himself denied that it was an anti-war
film.)
Bitter Victory may
be set in WWII, it may present, in harrowing detail, the kind of
military exploit that was prevalent in that war, but what it is really
about is not the bloody conflict between armies but the more fiercesome
inner struggle within a man, the acceptance or denial of responsibility
when confronted with life-and-death choices.
By this stage in his career, Ray was a bitter and disillusioned
man. It was his disgust with the Hollywood system that made the
prospect of directing this predominantly French-financed film so
attractive.
Bitter Victory,
he was convinced, would be
his
film, and no pig-headed, profit-conscious studio mogul was going to
take it away from him, as had recently happened on
The True Story of Jesse James
(1957).
The film's title was to prove singularly apt.
Although
Bitter Victory was
to be Ray's finest film, acclaimed by those European critics such as
Jean-Luc Godard who regarded him as a shining example of the film
auteur, it was to be yet another fraught production, with producer Paul
Graetz proving every bit as uncompromising and controlling as those
stiff-necked studio execs with whom Ray had run into conflict back in
Hollywood. Graetz not only overruled Ray's casting decisions (Ray
had wanted Montgomery Clift and Richard Burton for the roles of Leith
and Brand respectively; he ended up with Burton playing Leith and Curd
Jürgens as Brand), he also instigated several changes to the
screenplay. Once more, Ray's artistic instincts were to be
compromised by relentless interference from above.
Given the unhappy nature of the production, with Ray and his producer
behaving more like the leaders of two warring factions rather than
collaborators on the same venture, it is amazing the film holds up as
well as it does. The casting may not have been what Ray would
have wanted but the performances are impeccable - surely there was no
actor on the planet who was better suited to play the innately cynical
Leith than Richard Burton. Almost every line that Burton utters
has a searing truth about it that stings like acid, and the bitterly
corrosive effect of his words is palpably seen in Jürgens' equally
nuanced performance as the conscience-stricken Brand.
As well-choreographed and exciting as the action scenes are these cannot
compete with the blistering intensity and ferocity of the psychological
duel that Burton and Jürgens' characters submit to as their mutual
loathing turns into a private war that is every bit as real as the
fight against Fascism.
Greatly helped by Michel Kelber's sterling work on the cinematography
front, Ray brings an unbearably oppressive feel to his film, a sense of
abject desolation that intensifies with a remorseless tread as the
protagonists' personal feud builds to its gripping climax. In one
unforgettable scene, Burton's character has to decide whether to put a
pair of mortally wounded soldiers out of their misery. When,
after an excruciating moment of introspection, Leith finally shoots
dead one of the soldiers, you feel that you, the spectator, were the
one who pulled the trigger, such is the incredible power of Burton's
performance and Ray's flawless rendering of a crucial scene.
Equally inspired is the ending, which, with breathtaking simplicity,
hits you in the face with the bleakest summation of human
frailty. As Brand is left to contemplate the utter
meaninglessness of his own personal victory, so we are left with a
sickening realisation of the futility of
all conflict. War is not a
solution, it is a childish refuge for those who lack the courage and
imagination to see things differently.
After the bitter experience of
Bitter
Victory Nicholas Ray's career as a filmmaker was all but
over. His subsequent Biblical epic
King of Kings (1961) turned a
handsome profit but, for all its grandeur, it is far from being his
best work. Disillusionment with a system he had grown tired of
fighting, coupled with a chronic addiction to drink and narcotics, made
Ray an increasingly marginal figure in his later years. Yet,
since his death in 1979, he has come to be regarded as one of the most
important and inspired American film directors of his generation, a
major influence on not just the French New Wave but independent
filmmakers around the world since. Ray's ultimate victory
should be anything but bitter.
© James Travers 2014
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