The Woman on the Beach

Robert Ryan and Joan Bennett in The Woman on the Beach

Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach, hist last Hollywood film from 1947, is not near his top rank, but stands as an stunningly surreal 71 minute B. The cast is chock full of talented regulars who never gained A status: Martha Hyer, Irene Ryan, Nan Leslie, Harry Harvey, Walter Sande, etc. Robert Ryan and Charles Bickford, always welcome sights, are two points of a triangle with Joan Bennett in her bad girl brunette period. Unfortunately, the script is sub-Freudian bunkum. The film was pared down, cutting away ridiculous dialogue, but preserving Renoir's spasms of subjective cinema where he attempts to get inside his character's heads: the opening dream sequence, those inside the ship or following footsteps.

Joan Bennett pretty much carries this one on her bony shoulders. She had reinvented herself by playing dark temptresses for émigré directors. Bickford just has to look crazed and Ryan available. Renoir said there was more improvisation on this film than any of his others, but thought he had chopped away too much after a poorly received preview. A murky misfire on the surface, there is more here than meets the eye.