La donna della spiaggia

... and only gives it 1.5/4. Well Mr. Maltin is like any other critic - a useful tool as to what might be good or bad, but in this case I strongly disagree. It walks on the wild side where most American films did not tread in 1947 unless you were making a full-out noir with people who lived on the underbelly of life.

But this film has an American coast guard officer suffering from PTSD from his wartime experiences as a protagonist (Robert Ryan as Scott), back before they knew what PTSD was and just called it shell shocked. Scott is engaged to marry machinist Eve (Nan Leslie), but then he runs into Peggy (Joan Bennett), who is collecting fire wood near a beached wrecked vessel while he is riding his horse on the beach one day.

He goes back to her beach house where she lives with her blinded husband, Tod (Charles Bickford), a great artist before his blindness, which was caused by some rough sex and broken glass??? with Peggy, so Peggy feels responsible and trapped and Tod likes it that way. Exactly HOW Peggy could accidentally do what she did is unexplained but insinuated, and I assume is completely explained in the novel from which the screenplay is adapted.

The point is, Tod knows Peggy is attracted to Scott, and he seems to enjoy toying with both of them at dinner, yet invites Scott to return to visit them. Peggy and Scott share their unhealthy obsession with past demons, and to Scott this is more attractive than healthy all American Eve. In fact, he fails to show up for their wedding with no explanation, no apology. She has to come to him to get anything close to "Gee whiz I'm sorry".

On top of Scott's PTSD, he becomes obsessed both with Peggy, who understands him and doesn't try to "fix" him and his belief that Tod is really not blind. You see, Scott knows Peggy will leave Tod if it can be proved Tod can see. Tod does seem to follow light, is adventurous in where he is willing to wander alone, and seems to be looking people in the eye when he could not if blind. Can Tod see, and how far is Scott willing to go to prove he can? Watch and find out.

Ryan is always good as the troubled complex soul - you'll never see him play Santa Claus in these old films, but at least you can understand his character. As for Charles Bickford? He was always a giant talent who let his bluntness and temper get in the way of his career. Here he uses that bluntness and temper in his performance. This is probably the biggest role he is in this late in his career, and his characterization of the enigmatic painter is terrific.

I recommend this experimental and odd little film.

`Woman on the Beach' could have been a much better film; that's the tragedy of it. There's meat in this soup of a movie-mainly because of the performances of Charles Bickford and Joan Bennett. But the rest of it is awfully weak, including, somewhat surprisingly, Robert Ryan. The main failures are the screenplay and the score. The latter can be forgiven, although it's so heavy as to be intrusive, but the former is full of holes that leave the viewer baffled.

I've seen the film three times now and I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened to Ryan in his career during the war (Navy? Coast Guard? As a previous reviewer here suggested, it's weirdly unclear what Ryan's duties were before and after the war) and what is supposed to be wrong with him.

The secondary characters seem to have wandered into the noirish landscape from a Ma and Pa Kettle film and frankly I'm not all that surprised that Ryan seems ambivalent about marrying good girl, Nan Leslie. Renoir doesn't seem to have known just what genre of a film he was making. We go from the woman's film to film noir to hokey comedy and back again. Irene Ryan is wildly out of place and her performance is over the top in the worst kind of way.

But the gems in this film are Bennett and Bickford. Their characters' seamy, violent, sado-masochistic relationship is riveting and you can't help but wish that Renoir had spent more time focusing on it and less on the antics of the Wernecke brood. Joan Bennett usually needed good material (`Scarlet Street', `The Reckless Moment', `The Woman in the Window') to shine, but she does quite well here, particularly in her scenes with Bickford. There's also a wonderful moment where Ryan is beginning to realize that she isn't quite the put-upon little woman he thought she was. Her reaction is worth suffering through scenes about chocolate cake and the decorations at the coast guard station.

Charles Bickford is fabulous as the blinded, bitter and jealous artist, easily outshining the usually excellent Robert Ryan, who appears merely dazed and confused. This was the film that got me interested in Bickford's career. I've yet to find the movie where he isn't excellent.

Woman on the Beach, The (1947)

*** (out of 4)

This film features a very interesting story and there are a lot of great moments but at the same time there's a lot of silly and over the top moments and all of the blame has to go towards director Renoir. There's a very good love triangle going on here with a very well done mystery but for some reason Renoir lets the film slip into several over the top moments, which get a few laughs, which certainly wasn't the intent. One problem are the performances by Bennett and Ryan. Both fit their roles very nicely but each have scenes where their characters go so over the top that you've gotta wonder if Renoir was even watching what they were doing. There's also a scene near the end where it seems like Bennett was calling the shots on her own and doesn't know how to act in the scene, which turns out being rather confusing on her characters part. Bickford on the other hand delivers a very fierce and strong performance as the blind man with a temper. He clearly steals the show and acts circles around the other two leads. The film runs 71-minutes and goes by very fast and includes a couple very suspenseful scenes including one where the man wants to know if the husband is really blind and makes him walk on the edge of a cliff. Overall, the film kept me entertained but it's a shame this didn't turn out to be a masterpiece because all the pieces are there but just don't gel as well as they should.

Joan Bennett is "The Woman on the Beach" in this off-center 1947 film also starring Robert Ryan and Charles Bickford. Directed by Jean Renoir, it apparently was badly edited by RKO; thus, it sometimes felt to this viewer as if large sections were omitted.

Robert Ryan plays Scott, a Coast Guard officer with post-traumatic stress from the war. Psychologically, he's a little off balance. I suppose saying "Robert Ryan" and "a little off balance" is saying the same thing, given the roles he played, but there we are. He's set to be married to a lovely woman, Eve, (Nan Leslie), and in fact, urges her to marry him even sooner than planned in an early scene. A few minutes later, he's madly in love with Peggy (Bennett), whom he sees collecting driftwood on the beach near an old wreck. Her husband Tod, it turns out, is a great artist, now blind from a fight with his wife. The two of them have a fairly sick relationship, with Tod apparently tempting Peggy with good-looking young guys to see if she'll cheat on him. At one point during dinner with the couple, Scott passes a lighter across to Peggy and Tod head turns as the flame passes him. When Peggy walks Scott out of the house she says, "No, Scott, you're wrong." So Scott, somewhere in a cut out section, became convinced that Tod can see, tells Peggy, and feels that Tod failed the test. But you have to fill that in because it's not in the movie. It doesn't occur to him, I suppose, that Tod felt the heat of the light. Finally, Scott takes Tod for a walk along the cliffs, determined to find out for once and for all if he can see or not.

The film holds one's interest because of the direction, atmosphere, and performances, but things seem to happen very quickly. Eve complains to Scott that he didn't stop by the night before - which she considers a sign that they are drifting apart - and he tells her that he shouldn't be married. In the film it seems like that happens within 24 hours from the time he wants to get married immediately. Fickle. One suspects another cut.

This is a film about becoming free of obsession, and though some found the end ambiguous, it did seem clear to me that there was some resolution. The three leads are excellent - Bennett and Bickford play a couple with a strong history that has led to a love/hate "Virginia Woolf" type of relationship along with infidelity on her part; Ryan, looking quite young here, is handsome, sincere and gullible as a man who, while trying to break free of his demons, walks into a situation that feeds on them rather than resolves them.

With a more judicious cutting, "The Woman on the Beach" could have been a really fantastic film, with its psychological underpinnings being far ahead of their time. As it is, it's still worth watching, though if I'd been Renoir, I would have been plenty angry at RKO for what was done to this movie.

Jean Renoir was a fascinating director, but this one has holes in it, despite a classic "beach" mood. Robert Ryan, one of our most underrated actors, looks perfect but seems miscast in this one. Joan Bennett (I've never quite gotten her appeal) seems lost, although she was perfect in the two Fritz Lang films (Scarlett Street & Woman in the Window). Best performance = Charles Bickford as the blind painter-husband. I know there were problems with editing this at the time, but I kept hoping for more.

A 6 out of 10. Too much blasting music, but great cinematography. Irene Ryan (Granny Clampett) has a supporting role, and I believe this is the first film I've seen her in. A great director, but I just couldn't grab onto this film.