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Reviews
The Victors (1963)
Intelligent, powerful and very politically incorrect
I saw this the first day it came out in 1964 and among the strange and memorable (if episodic) vignettes was this brief bit toward the end with this 12 year-old German boy visiting the tents of the American soldiers. It's pouring rain and the men are in their tents and this little blond kid goes into one of the tents. He comes flying out the door a minute later, having been thrown out apparently, by an angered, and cursing G.I. Another soldier reproaches the angry G.I., saying "What's the matter with you?" and the G.I. answers "Did you see what he tried to do to me?" The boy, picking himself out of the mud, yells back at him "The Russians didn't mind!" I was a teenager so I was a bit scandalized by this and mentioned it to my friends. But when they saw the movie a few weeks later - they told me that scene was gone. When I took my girlfriend to see it the following week - it was indeed gone. I had no idea at the time the movie had been recalled and re-cut, and I couldn't figure out why I would imagine a scene like that if it hadn't existed. Now I know I actually saw it (and other scenes that promptly disappeared). I wonder where the original print is.