Bright Victory (Universal-International) tries earnestly to picture the struggles of a wounded World War II veteran faced with a life of blindness. In its treatment as well as its subject, the film invites, and suffers from, comparison with last year's The Men, which probed the postwar plight of paraplegic veterans.
The new picture has some solid virtues : an acute performance by Arthur (The Glass Menagerie) Kennedy as the hero, and engrossing documentary-style scenes (actually shot in Valley Forge General Hospital) showing how veterans are taught to get along without sight until they learn to find their way surely through the everyday routine of living.
Producer-Scripter Robert Buckner, working from the 1945 novel, Lights Out, is less successful in dramatizing the story of how the hero finds his way, through a darkness of self-pity and the patronizing pity of others, to inner strength and security. Without the unpretty toughness and raw emotional power of The Men, the film moves slickly on a sentimental journey past soap-opera landmarks. Veteran Kennedy must choose between living supinely on a sinecure provided by his prewar fiancee's wealthy father, or striking out independently with the help of a selfless girl (Peggy Dow) who loves him. The choice, and the plot maneuverings leading up to it, are never in doubt.
Not content with solving the problems of its blind hero so easily, Bright Victory is even more superficial in an over-tricky subplot that as glibly poses and solves the Negro problem. At best an uneven treatment of a touching subject, the movie courts an audience that may have found The Men too disturbingly bitter a pill; some moviegoers undoubtedly will prefer its soothing blend of easy sentiment and honey-smooth solutions.
Marie du Port (Bellon-Foulke International) is a rueful French comedy relating, with De Maupassant relish, the unequal struggle between a middle-aged roue (Jean Gabin) and an innocent young barmaid (Nicole Courcel), who is the young sister of his mistress. While his mistress attends her father's funeral in a Breton fishing village, Gabin idles about the town, casts a speculative eye on a boat which is for sale and on the barmaid who is not. Both boat and barmaid bring him back to tiny Port-au-Bessein, but he is unable to enjoy either: the boat has a quarrelsome ex-owner; the barmaid, a young admirer who despairingly throws himself under the wheels of Cabin's car.
In a strategic withdrawal, Gabin retires to Cherbourg, where he owns a cafe and movie house, but the barmaid and complications follow him. Finally, Gabin packs his mistress off to Paris, gets the despairing young man a job as hairdresser on the Queen Mary and, happily resigned, leads the still-virtuous barmaid to the altar.
Gabin is excellent as the man-about-town who becomes slowly aware that he is sinking into matrimonial quicksand. Nicole Courcel is completely convincing as the triumphant barmaid. Producer-Director Marcel (Children of Paradise) Carne paces the slight story, from one of Simenon's short novels, a little too slowly, but with a neat blending of decorative scenery and indecorous sex.