Look: it’s not Arthur Kennedy’s fault that he gave what now appears to be a mediocre performance right as Method acting was about to change film forever. It’s just that the role of Larry Nevins, a soldier blinded in WWII who has to come to grips with his disability, is tailor-made for an actor who wants to show you the inner struggle of the character. Alas, if only there was some sort of Method that allowed actors to do that! Instead, Kennedy’s performance was broad and hammy, lacking the nuance needed for this kind of character study.
But Kennedy couldn’t have known about the sea change in acting that was right around the corner. That makes his performance like the music of Bobby Vinton, owner of the last Billboard #1 hit before the Beatles broke through. It takes hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand”—or seeing Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire—to discover that there’s so much more we can do with these art forms. And once you do, what came before becomes disposable.
The least disagreeable parts of Bright Victory are the paint-by-numbers pieces where Larry learns to live as a blind man. Unfortunately, the movie is also burdened with a tired love triangle and riddled with numerous half-baked subplots. One is about how Larry’s racism softens because of a friend he makes that he doesn’t know is black.1 Another is Larry’s discovery that he has what the doctors call “optical perception,” which Larry says is like echolocation.2 That fills up enough runtime to gets us to the conclusion: Larry accepts his blindness, decides to become a blind lawyer3, picks one of the girls to love (it doesn’t matter which one), and reconciles with his black friend.
Rating: 3/10, but don’t worry, the Method guys are the Beatles and they’re already here.
Cast and Crew
Jeopardy has never once asked a question about Arthur Kennedy, though they have alluded to his Tony-winning stint on Broadway as Biff Loman in “Death of a Salesman.” He was relegated mostly to being a supporting actor extraordinaire after Bright Victory, and in that capacity he picked up three Oscar nominations.4 We’ll be seeing him in some big-name movies in the 1960s and I bet it’ll be fun to see our old friend Arthur Kennedy by then, even if he kinda sucked here.
Peggy Dow, who plays the faceless love interest who restores Larry’s confidence, is best known for this role and as the nurse in Harvey. She’s actually pretty good in these two thankless roles but her career is over by 1952.
Rock Hudson is, like, fifteenth-billed in this one, and if you watch this (which I wouldn’t) and can pick him out, you’re better at this than I am. Don’t worry, we’ll catch up with the Rock in 1956.
The Trivia
Larry is wounded in North Africa, so let’s talk a bit about the WWII North African campaign. We’ll start in 1942 with Edwin Rommel and the Africa Korps taking the important Libyan seaport of Tobruk from the British. From there, the Germans entered Egypt and pushed on to El Alamein, where the Brits made a stand; had they not, control of Cairo and the crucial Suez Canal might have been lost. Three months later, the British commander Bernard Montgomery (who later was put in charge of all ground forces at the start of 1944's Normandy invasion) counterattacked and defeated the Germans in the Second Battle of El Alamein5, pushing the Axis back to the Mareth Line in Tunisia by December. Rommel was removed from command in March 1943.6
Meanwhile, the Americans landed in Vichy North Africa, expecting little resistance. They were wrong: the French put up a fight in Morocco and parts of Algeria, though by 1943, the majority of the fighting in North Africa went to wresting Tunisia away from the Axis. Larry (the protagonist in Bright Victory) was presumably injured in Tunisia. Another wounded soldier in the film mentions his experience in the Kasserine Pass; that battle took place in the Atlas Mountains in Tunisia in 1943 and was a decisive loss by the Allies.
While reading the 1943 news, a soldier mentions Leslie Howard being shot down. Howard, an English actor, starred as Philip Carey in an adaptation of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1934). He also played Ashley in Gone With the Wind (1939). Howard was shot down on a commercial flight from Lisbon to Bristol; there are numerous theories as to why the Luftwaffe shot it down, including that it was a mistake, that they thought Churchill was on board, and that they were actively targeting Howard because of his involvement with British propaganda.
Odds and Ends
On the plane home, the men are listening to the Lone Ranger; you should know that Clayton Moore played the Lone Ranger on TV and Jay Silverheels played Tonto…while making out with a soldier, a girl sees the time off the glowing radium dial of his watch and sends him home; dials of watches used to be painted with radium to produce radioluminescence (but had an unfortunate side effect of causing radium-induced osteonecrosis, also called “radium jaw”)...Larry’s journey to wellness begins at the Valley Forge General Hospital, a real hospital that once was the largest military hospital in the U.S.; unfortunately for their staff, once Bright Victory came out, all personnel were required to view the film.
Though yeah, when I say “softens,” I mean “1950s softens,” which means he just stops using the N-word.
Pretty sure that’s Daredevil’s superpower.
Like Daredevil!
Those Best Supporting Actor nominations were for Trial (1955), Peyton Place (1957), and Some Came Running (1958).
Why did the British win the Second Battle of El Alamein? Well, my source on all this North Africa stuff is “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Money, Oil, and Power,” by Daniel Yergin; that book is about the history of oil, so naturally it argues that the reason was oil.
There is a “Rommel myth” that Rommel was opposed to Nazi policies. Some of this comes from his potential involvement with the July 20th plot, where Claus von Stauffenberg planned to assassinate Hitler with an explosive in a briefcase. (This was called “Operation Valkyrie” and was portrayed in the Tom Cruise flick Valkyrie.) The Rommel myth dovetails with the “myth of the clean Wehrmacht,” which alleges that the regular German armed forces (the Wehrmacht) were not involved in the Holocaust. Note that both the Rommel myth and the myth of the clean Wehrmacht have the word “myth” in them, and anyway, I’m not here to make a tier list of which Nazis were the least evil. Nazis are Nazis.