Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

bkoganbing It's sad that Jean Renoir's exile period in the USA ended on such a low note as this film. The Woman On The Beach is about some really strange people who in the end you really don't care about.Robert Ryan is a Coast Guard lieutenant on horse shore patrol on the California Pacific coast. He's suffered from shell shock in the late war. He's seeing good girl Nan Leslie who runs a boat house, but has some recurring dreams of his wreck and time in the water with a girl that looks like Joan Bennett.Enter Joan Bennett who is the loose wife of blind painter Charles Bickford. She'd like to be free of him, but Bickford who when he lost his sight became embittered and won't let her go.About half way through this moody film about some people who aren't quite all there, you just stop caring. The Woman On The Beach though it only runs 71 minutes will make you think of Gone With The Wind in length, but definitely not quality.Because of the snail's pace this film goes Charles Bickford does some real scenery chewing I'm sure to liven things up. I've never seen Bickford indulge in overacting the way he does here.I remember seeing this film back in the 70s on television and thought it was claptrap then. I haven't changed my verdict.

Martin Teller The Woman on the Beach A coast guard lieutenant gets caught in the middle of a tempestuous marriage. The film has a lot of psychological angles and is anchored by three strong characters with fine performances by Ryan, Bennett and Bickford. However, the story just never takes off and seems to float around without a destination. The emotions bubbling under the surface rarely materialize into compelling plot material and I was fighting boredom a lot of the time. I also found the cinematography uninspired (except for Ryan's surreal nightmare) and the score far too oppressive.6/10

edwagreen You'd think that a film starring Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan and Charles Bickford would be far better. For one thing, Bickford, already in 1947, looked far too old to play Bennett's blinded painter husband. Ryan is a coast guard officer who falls for Bennett and at the same time suspects that Bickford is feigning his blindness. That would have been a great premise to stick to, but it didn't and the picture may have suffered as a result.Ryan allows Bickford to fall off a rock and the two battle on a raft during a ferocious storm. Amazingly, there are no fatalities, which in itself is ridiculous.When I saw the ending, I thought that they would be bringing in Mrs. Danvers from "Rebecca," and even that scene ended in what many might view as a cop out.

st-shot The distinguished French director Jean Renoir beaches himself on American shores in less than graceful style with this flatly performed melodramatic noir that involves post traumatic stress and infidelity. While Renoir manages to keep the suspense building with character ambiguity he does so at the expense of draining the emotional realism from them.Scott (Robert Ryan), a coastguard officer is haunted by nightmares of a ship sinking he survived. In an attempt to move on he proposes to his girl friend who does not want to rush into things. Riding his horse along the shore one day he encounters Peggy (Joan Bennett), who lives near bye with her blind artist husband, Todd (Charles Bickford). Confused and vulnerable the pair enter into a passionate affair.With the character of Peggy as his linchpin Renoir presents us with an ideal fatale; mysterious beautiful and dangerous. Her ambiguity is key to the suspenseful nature of the film but Joan Bennett is too icily remote and unconvincing in her passion for Scott or Todd turning her feelings on and off like a faucet. Ryan and Bickford for the most part circle each other like wounded animals challenging and looking for an opportunity to strike. Both are so bitter they make it hard to believe they have any love in them.Given it's brief running time (71 min.) and its choppy narrative Woman on the Beach may not be the film Renoir intended. All three wax existential in brief moments of metaphorical intent but the conversation rapidly turns to rage and irrationality much of the time as Renoir employs excessive zooms and a overheated music score to give Woman a B movie style of haphazard excess. The tacked on compromise to salvage this shipwreck makes it only sink deeper.