Ask most people who brought black actors into serious roles and they'll say Sidney Poitier. Wrong. Before Poitier was James Edwards. Watch him in "Home of the Brave" and "Pork Chop Hill" and no less in this picture. (Ironically, his last role was as a "menial," Scott's orderly in "Patton.") He's been under-appreciated in the sociology of movies.
But Edwards doesn't star here, rather it's Arthur Kennedy, who never quite made it as a lead and was soon regularly cast as a charming villain, much like Dan Duryea before him. Nevertheless, he handles this role, a soldier permanently blinded in the war undergoing extensive VA rehabilitation, as well as could be done. We learn things about blindness in "Bright Victory," about its lows and the courage it takes to cope with it. The racist issue is secondary but by no means muted. It may be a little simplistic to proclaim that the racist divide is simply a visual prejudice--that to a blind man everybody is the same color--but it's a start.
Another important prejudice issue is about handicaps. Kennedy's high school sweetheart has to finally reject him because she realizes she can't cope with his blindness (contrast with "The Best Years of Our Lives"). Even his parents have to teach themselves to deal with it.
It's a tough-minded film, all in all, unique in its way, not meant to be "heartwarming" as films about the handicapped seem to have to be these days.
But Edwards doesn't star here, rather it's Arthur Kennedy, who never quite made it as a lead and was soon regularly cast as a charming villain, much like Dan Duryea before him. Nevertheless, he handles this role, a soldier permanently blinded in the war undergoing extensive VA rehabilitation, as well as could be done. We learn things about blindness in "Bright Victory," about its lows and the courage it takes to cope with it. The racist issue is secondary but by no means muted. It may be a little simplistic to proclaim that the racist divide is simply a visual prejudice--that to a blind man everybody is the same color--but it's a start.
Another important prejudice issue is about handicaps. Kennedy's high school sweetheart has to finally reject him because she realizes she can't cope with his blindness (contrast with "The Best Years of Our Lives"). Even his parents have to teach themselves to deal with it.
It's a tough-minded film, all in all, unique in its way, not meant to be "heartwarming" as films about the handicapped seem to have to be these days.