Bitter Victory holds first place in Godard’s ranking of the ten best films of 1957. For the young critic, Nicholas Ray’s wartime drama represented the quintessence of cinema – modern characters, natural acting, the demolition of the barrier between fiction and reality. Cinematic auteurship had finally been given full expression: “There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.”