One of the offerings in the series of war films now playing in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center, is a pristine print of "Bitter Victory." In this restored British version, longer by 20 minutes than the original trimmed American release in 1957, much of the drama takes place away from the battlefield and explores the vagaries of war and wartime on men's minds. Largely overlooked in the United States, one of the last great films of masterful director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place), this offbeat war film pits Richard Burton as Captain Leith against fellow officer Major Brand (Curt Jurgens) in the African dessert. On a perilous mission to obtain critical German army documents from an outpost in Libya, the two officers, in love with the same woman, couldn't be more unalike. Brand is a career military man who has managed to stay safely out of the action. Burton is an enlisted officer and civilian archeologist who stays safely away from emotional relationships. He left Jane Brand (Ruth Roman), now the Major’s wife, at the altar several years earlier.

When the two men are chosen to carry out the hazardous task, underlying emotional rivalries rise to fever pitch. Their fatal flaws, unleashed by the unnatural atmosphere of war, bring a bitter victory indeed to their success. When Brand is threatened by the bold recklessness and raw masculinity of Burton's Leith, the war between the two men is played out in the terrible and powerful expanse of the desert as they make their way across it with a small band of survivors.

The vast unbroken waves of sand and dazzling black and white cinematography are showcased on the widescreen and remind us of how a movie can look at its best. This film evokes the mood of Anthony Mann’s western "The Naked Spur," and repeats the theme of another film in the series, Robert Aldrich's "Attack." "Bitter Victory" fleshes out the straight story of how some men end up with a chest full of medals and others go home in a pine box, their real stories untold. A taut suspense scene of the assault on the Nazi outpost notwithstanding, this view of war, removed from the trenches, provides insight into how war movies shape and/or distort our willingness to support military actions and at what cost. The two men are in the same army but their interpersonal dynamics make them adversaries of a different sort. Tension builds with the help of a restrained musical score that is unleashed at precisely the right instant and drives home with intensity the consequences of cowardice, fear, fearlessness, and injustice.