Bitter Victory (1957)

Film: Bitter Victory (1957)
Stars: Richard Burton, Curt Jurgens, Ruth Roman
Director: Nicholas Ray
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roman (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we've stated throughout this month, Ruth Roman arguably had the shortest run as a leading woman in our series.  She enjoyed a brief run as a potential star with a Golden Globe nomination (for Champion), films with major directors (Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor), and a Life Magazine front cover story.  By 1957, though, her career had largely been relegated to highly-billed but ancillary roles in B-pictures.  She wasn't even the top-ranked female star in a number of these movies, getting lower placement on the marquee than bigger names like Barbara Stanwyck & Virginia Mayo.  One could make the argument that her most well-known role post Strangers on a Train had been as the most famous person aboard the SS Andrea Doria, a luxury liner which sank in 1956, and briefly separated Roman from her son Richard before they were reunited (they had been on two different lifeboats).  All of this is to say that by 1957, getting to work with a director as consummate & celebrated as Nicholas Ray was a big coup for Roman, one that might have spelled a last chance for bigger stardom or even a "comeback" of sorts.  Alas, Ray's artistic side had other ideas.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film pits Captain Jim Leith (Burton) and Major David Brand (Jurgens) against each other right from the start.  Brand is a "model officer," someone who has used the military for prestige and uniformity, but doesn't have the experience as an actual soldier in the field that is required when a dangerous mission to go behind enemy lines into Benghazi during World War II emerges.  He therefore is forced to have Leith tag along for the duration (though he's under Brand's command), and he hates this-Leith is a rebel, someone who doesn't enjoy the strictness of the military and follows his own commands.  Both men are linked by their relationships with Jane (Roman), Brand's wife but Leith's former lover; Leith left her without explanation, and while the film has little need for such frivolity (this is not one of Ray's more romantic films), it's implied heavily that Jane never really got over Leith.  On the mission, it's proven that Brand cannot kill a German up-close, and his cowardice is seen by Leith.  Brand then uses his superior position to try and get Leith killed, eventually succeeding by not telling him about a scorpion that is nearby, which stings Leith and kills him.  In the process, though, his men essentially think that Brand is a murderer, and while he wins a medal, Jane can no longer stand him, and she leaves him realizing that his ego and jealousy caused him to kill the man she truly loved.

The film is bleak, which isn't an alien emotion for Ray, but it's definitely one that doesn't have the softness or tenderness that something like Rebel Without a Cause would have.  Roman's Jane is the only female character in the film, certainly the only one of consequence, and so it's mostly about the parlor games of men in power & wartime.  It's occasionally interesting to see a war film that's less about bravery and more about the emotional sacrifices that are required to fight in wartime, and how some people are not cut-out for death.  It's clear that Burton's Leith is intended to be the hero to Jurgens's villainous Brand, but honestly it's probably this aspect of the film that makes it age poorly and doesn't put it next to some of the truly great pictures that Nicholas Ray was able to create.  The lack of sympathy for Brand, especially initially when he simply cannot be the swaggering, Type-A man's man that Leith is, feels at odds with the rest of the film's "war is hell" motif.  Coupled with long stretches that are just boring (real talk: I am very hit-or-miss when it comes to enjoying Richard Burton onscreen), and you get a movie that is forgettable, not the sort of film like In a Lonely Place or Rebel where actresses like Gloria Grahame & Natalie Wood get parts-of-a-lifetime.

This is all to say that Ruth Roman didn't get her moment in the sun, and never really did.  She starred with famous directors and has a significant part in one undisputed classic, but her career is a fascinating study in what happens when a star simply doesn't land with the public, even when she has beauty to spare.  I wanted to take a look at Roman's career to see if there was something in her work that the public missed, a forgotten gem, but alas what I found was someone who couldn't elevate her material enough to warrant the careers of women like Grace Kelly & Ava Gardner whom she briefly counted as her peers.  Next month, we'll go to someone who was a proper (but quite distinctive) star whose run of success in the late 1940's kept one major studio afloat.