{"id":14383,"date":"2021-08-28T20:00:39","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T00:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=14383"},"modified":"2021-08-28T19:03:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T23:03:11","slug":"bitter-victory-1957-nicholas-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/14383","title":{"rendered":"Bitter Victory (1957, Nicholas Ray)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/14365\">The Story of Three Loves<\/a><\/em>, the second movie I watched for a Rosenbaum lecture.  So soon (for me and for him) after <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/14317\">Run For Cover<\/a><\/em> I&#8217;m feeling shaky about Ray, but at least he made the great <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/5705\">Bigger Than Life<\/a><\/em> in between.  Turned out pretty well for a big-ego war adventure story.<\/p>\n<p><em>Looks more like a Bob Hope movie at this point:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image21\/bittervic2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Major Curd J\u00fcrgens (he played the Emil Jannings role in the <em>Blue Angel<\/em> remake) is supposed to lead a desert rescue operation, then Captain Richard Burton is put in charge instead.  Rivalry ensues &#8211; Curd chokes when he&#8217;s supposed to knife a guard, and his wife used to date Burton, so they try to get each other killed until Burton finally dies in a sandstorm.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image21\/bittervic1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Wilkies, wonderwall&#8221; &#8211; whoa, this was a real term&#8230; is it a britishization of the German wunderbar?  I&#8217;m not gonna research this.  It&#8217;s also the most times I&#8217;ve heard the name Benghazi in a movie.  Sgt. Christopher Lee doesn&#8217;t make a strong impression &#8211; this was the same year he played Frankenstein&#8217;s monster, the year before his <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/3340\">Dracula<\/a><\/em>.  Safecracker Wilkins is Nigel Green of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/11537\">Masque of the Red Death<\/a><\/em>, sort of a low-rent Timothy Carey.<\/p>\n<p>JR: &#8220;They&#8217;re both assholes&#8230; they become prisoners of their own macho self-images,&#8221; JR pulling no punches.  &#8220;I see it as an attack on macho.&#8221;  &#8220;The desire to have war sometimes exceeds any justification.&#8221;  This was Ray&#8217;s attempt to go indie and break from Hollywood, though he didn&#8217;t have much control &#8211; the novelist retained script approval, the producers controlled casting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After The Story of Three Loves, the second movie I watched for a Rosenbaum lecture. So soon (for me and for him) after Run For Cover I&#8217;m feeling shaky about Ray, but at least he made the great Bigger Than Life in between. Turned out pretty well for a big-ego war adventure story. Looks more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[342,1087,37],"class_list":["post-14383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1950s","tag-nicholas-ray","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14418,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14383\/revisions\/14418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}