Product Details

• Actors: Richard Burton, Curd Jürgens, Ruth Roman, Raymond Pellegrin, Anthony Bushell
• Directors: Nicholas Ray
• Writers: Nicholas Ray, Gavin Lambert, Paul Gallico, René Hardy, Vladimir Pozner
• Producers: Paul Graetz, Robert Laffont
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Unknown)
• Subtitles: Japanese
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• DVD Release Date: February 22, 2005
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00070HK2O
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,768 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Bitter Victory" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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

Product Description

A BRITISH CAPTAIN GOES ON A RAID IN WORLD WAR II LIBYA WITH A MAJOR HE KNOWS HIS WIFE HAS SLEPT WITH.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real masterpiece!, February 20, 2005

By	Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tiny anti-war movie with a superb cast., January 3, 2007

By	Patrick Selitrenny (Switzerland a.k.a. Helvetia Felix) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic, Frustrating, Brilliant, August 24, 2009

By	Michael P. Healy (Hailey, ID USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The conflict between the two main characters seems at first one-sided, with the cynical, intellectual Burton more attractive than the stolid, uncertain Jurgens. But by the end of the film, with one of the men dead, which is the better soldier and which the better man is not so clear. It's a movie full of interesting, unanswered questions.

If you are intrigued by this brilliant and beautiful film where so much is left unsaid and unexplained, you will want to read James Harvey's chapter on Bitter Victory in his 2001 book Movie Love in the Fifties. He relates the confusion and conflict from which this extraordinary movie arose and provides a detailed, shot-by-shot analysis of several important scenes.