Arthur Kennedy, Bright Victory

Won: New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor

Take a look at Arthur Kennedy's career from 1949 through the 1950s - a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor, five(!!) Academy Award nominations, and inaugural stage performances in The Crucible and The Price, among other things - and you'd think he'd have been set to become a much more regarded actor in the collective memory than he is today. That said: in reviewing his sole Oscar nomination in the lead acting category (a performance which also won him the Best Actor prize via the New York Film Critics), I was expecting a sort of dynamism that might complement these impressive highlights in his resume. Alas...

Kennedy's work might have fared a little better if I hadn't already seen 1950's The Men - comparing and contrasting the two, one is to find that Bright Victory suffers from much poorer writing, and that Kennedy seems to lack the vigor that Brando so amply brings to their respective handicapped WWII soldiers. It might not be fair to measure Kennedy's work here against that of the man who'd go on to help permanently change the conventional notions of film acting, but the fact of the matter is, this is a straightforward, lackluster performance that did little to pique the interest of this viewer.

What struck me as odd about the film was how Kennedy's character is written to float through his disability rather swimmingly, save for a brief, semi-dramatic (but underwhelming) suicidal moment shortly after his diagnosis. At a glance, it seems as though Bright Victory doesn't care to dive into Larry's neurosis once he becomes blind; this is less a film about the road to recovery a la The Men and more so a film about a man who is newly blind (and acclimating to being blind), but also juggling some other very important things in his life, such as a romantic love triangle or combating his Southern-instilled racist values.  I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise, given the film's marketing is "the love story of today's generation!" That said, Kennedy's not exactly a wildly romantic leading man, either.

So what we've got is a fairly dramatic storyline, with a leading man who's neither a dramatist here, nor a convincing romanticist, nor a really convincing, hateful racist. Given the element of disability that's in play, I expected (and would have appreciated) some more fire and expression from Kennedy, who instead drifts through the picture in a manner that's mostly relaxed. As is typically the case with these older films, what could have been quite interesting is rendered less so - the key differentiator of this particular film plot (blindness) takes a back seat to some very awkward, haphazard subplots that can be found in many other pictures. And ultimately, what results provides little distinguishable value.