BITTER VICTORY
T. it.: “Vittoria amara”; Scen.: René Hardy, Gavin Lambert, Nicholas Ray, Vladimir Pozner, dall’omonimo romanzo di René Hardy; Dialoghi aggiunti: Paul Gallico; Dialoghi francesi: Raymond Queneau; F.: Michel Kelber; Op.: Wladimir Ivanov; M.: Léonide Azar; Scgf.: Jean d’Eaubonne; Cost.: Jean Zay; Trucco: René Daudin; Mu.: Maurice Le Roux; Su.: Joseph de Bretagne e (non accr.) Renée Lichtig; Ass. R.: Eddie Luntz; Int.: Richard Burton (capitano James Leith), Curd Jürgens (maggiore David Brand), Ruth Roman (Jane Brand), Raymond Pellegrin (Mekrane), Sean Kelly (tenente Barton), Anthony Bushell (generale Patterson), Nigel Green (Wilkins), Sumner Williams (Anderson), Christopher Lee (sergente Barney), Christian Melsen (Abbot), Alfred Burke (maggiore Callander), Fred Matter (Lutz), Raoul Delfosse (Kassel), Ramón de Larrocha (Sanders), Joe Davray (Spicer), Andrew Crawford (Roberts), Ronan O’Casey (sergente Dunnigan), Harry Landis (Browning); Prod.: Paul Graetz per Transcontinental Film S.A. e Robert Laffont Productions, Columbia; 35mm. D.: 93’. Bn.
Film Notes
Bitter Victory is rather like one of those drawings in which children are asked to find the hunter and which at first seem to be a meaningless mass of lines. Not that one should say ‘behind the British Commando raid on Rommel’s headquarters lies a symbol of our time’, because there is no behind and no before. Bitter Victory is what it is. […] It is no longer a question of either reality or fiction, or of one transcending the other. It is a question of something quite different. What? The stars, maybe, and men who like to look at them and dream.
Jean-Luc Godard, in “Cahiers du cinéma”, n. 79, 1958 (translated by Tom Milne, in Godard on Godard)