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.
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.