Η Γυναίκα στην Παραλία

matt lynch4.0

Starts on a dream before we really even know anything about the dreamer, setting us up for this totally gripping insular world entirely stabilized by trauma and jealousy and wasted potential. Happiness is actually a threat here.

Filipe Furtado4.5

Joan Bennett’s sight can turn any good man mad. One of the greatest pornographic poems. Sheer lunacy at the altar of Lang’s desecration of La Chienne (way more relevant here than any possible frustration Renoir might had with his American career). Even the fact that Renoir had to cut 20 minutes out of it helps the feeling of cherchez la muse until there is nothing left but pure artistic hubris and misplaced desire.

Jesse Snoddon3.5

"You know when they let me out of the hospital they said lieutenant your wounds are all healed. Your sound in body and mind....but my head! Let's face it I'm not well!"Coast Guard officer Scott (Robert Ryan) is suffering from PTSD. He's making a go of it, and in love with his fiancee Eve (Nan Leslie), but he can't shake the torment the memories bring. That is, until he meets Peggy (Joan Bennett), a woman who has been through a thing or two about surviving trauma herself. He feels recognized, and that recognition brings him a sliver of the peace he's looking for. But of course things are never that easy, and before he knows it Scott finds himself in a bizarre contest with Tod (Charles Bickford), Peggy's blind cruel husband over her affections and unsure of what to do about Eve. There's something haunting about Renoir's portrait of these broken people thrust together seeking a solace none are capable of providing for one another. It's not just the stunning visuals, which include a breathtaking array of images that include a dream sequence where Ryan strides across ocean floor, a rusted out old boat on the coast he rides his black horse past regularly, or the deep, obscuring fog that rolls in at one point. These visuals provide all the atmosphere needed to recommend the film on their own. But the performances add a layer. Ryan is magnificent here. His heartbroken cry about not being well mentally in the beginning is rending. Much of the time he plays Scott as austere, with just enough vacancy to let us in on the fact that the exterior he puts forth papers over a barely contained, roiling cauldron of emotional pain. Bickford keeps us guessing about his motivations and even whether or not he can see, a tricky line to walk (leading to a memorably tense sequence where Scott tests his sight at a cliff's edge). Bennett is solid as a noir type protagonist and gives depth to a character that's moulded largely from abusive circumstances. The three are combustible elements when combined, and show that people with wounds will go a long way with bad decisions to just make their pain lessen, however briefly. As you can tell, there are some real tragic undertones to this one. The Woman on the Beach is a tightly calibrated film, coming in at just over 70 minutes, so even if you don't wind up liking it, you won't have spent much time on it. It's well crafted melodrama that has some real empathy for its characters and treats PTSD with empathy. It does operate largely on dream logic so some decisions characters make can seem abrupt or strange, but this worked for me with the general vibe the film is going for and I wound up responding to it.