To the Victor ** (1948, Dennis Morgan, Viveca Lindfors, Bruce Bennett, Victor Francen, Dorothy Malone) – Classic Movie Review 7982

Director Delmer Daves’s well-meaning, acceptable 1948 drama To the Victor tells a romantic drama tale of gloom and doom, and stars Dennis Morgan, Viveca Lindfors, Bruce Bennett, Victor Francen and Dorothy Malone.

Morgan stars as American one-time World War Two hero and now black marketeer Paul Taggart, who stays on in post-war France, where he falls for Nazi collaborator’s wife Christine (Lindfors), but she condemns herself as a collaborator too at her husband’s trial. The husband ends up in jail while Christine and Paul fall in love.

Partly made on location in France – in Paris and Calvados, Normandy (Omaha Beach) – To the Victor really demands better performances and a better screenplay, although it is carefully written by the talented Richard Brooks, has a decent set-up and director Daves handles it all expertly. Unfortunately it is also filmed in the studio at Warner Brothers, Burbank, California, and the two kinds of filming do not merge happily or successfully.

Also in the cast are Tom D’Andrea, William Conrad, Eduardo Ciannelli, Anthony Caruso, Konstantin Shayne, William Conrad, Jean De Briac, Joseph Buloff, Henry Rowland, John Banner, Luis Van Rooten, Louis Mercier, Clyde Cook, George Davis, Marcelle Corday, Douglas Kennedy, Torben Meyer, Paul Panzer, Denise Darcel, Paul Bryar, Fred Burns, Felipe Turich and George Sorel.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7982

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