The woman on the beach

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Movie
German title The woman on the beach
Original title The Woman on the Beach
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1947
length 71 minutes
Rod
Director Jean Renoir
script Frank Davis
Jean Renoir
production Will Price (Associate Producer)
music Hanns Eisler
camera Jean Renoir
Harry J. Wild (as Harry Wild)
cut Lyle Boyer
Roland Gross
occupation

The woman on the beach (Original title: The Woman on the Beach ) is a in black and white twisted American film drama and film noir by Jean Renoir from 1947. It was created based on the novel None So Blind by Mitchell Wilson .

action

Coast Guard Lieutenant Scott Burnett has been traumatized since the sinking of the ship he served on during the war. While riding on the beach, he meets the mysterious Peggy Butler, who regularly retreats to a shipwreck on the beach to be alone. Her husband, the once successful painter Tod Butler, with whom she shares a love-hate relationship, is blind. Scott falls for Peggy and breaks his engagement to Eve. He later learns that Peggy's death injured him during one of their many arguments, causing him to go blind. Soon Scott becomes obsessed with the idea of ​​ripping Peggy out of what he considers to be an unhappy relationship. Convinced that death is only faking his blindness, Scott deliberately directs him to the cliffs on the beach. Death falls down but survives and is even ready to forgive Scott. Scott and Peggy continue their affair. During a storm, Scott takes Tod on a boat trip and leaks the boat at sea to force Tod to release Peggy. The coast guard rescues the two men from their perilous situation. Death sets fire to his earlier paintings, which Peggy hoped to sell to secure her financial future. Peggy still decides for her husband and leaves the scene with him. Scott walks away alone.

background

Lead actress Joan Bennett made Renoir aware of the material that Val Lewton was initially supposed to produce for RKO Pictures , but this turned to other projects. Jack J. Gross served as executive producer and Will Price as associate producer. Renoir, who "practically became his own producer" and enjoyed full artistic freedom while shooting, was fascinated by the "love story whose protagonists were physically attracted to one another without any emotions being involved". After catastrophic previews, the director decided to cut the film by around a third and shoot new scenes. These mainly concerned scenes between Bennett and Robert Ryan . The result was “a film that had lost its purpose. […] I was too influenced by the previews […] I was too far ahead of the audience's taste. ”(Renoir) The Woman on the Beach was Renoir's last American film.

The Woman on the Beach premiered in the United States in June 1947 and was a financial failure. In Germany , the film was not shown in cinemas, but was shown on television for the first time on June 7, 1969.

The affiliation of the film to the film noir canon is controversial. The film historians Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward and James Naremore do not lead him in their studies on film noir. In contrast, it was included in the books by Foster Hirsch, Geoff Mayer and Andrew Spicer.

criticism

The woman on the beach was recorded mixed at the start of the film and in later years. Variety spoke of “another original product of Jean Renoir's impressive imagination”, but its commercial potential will be limited due to its “disturbing otherness” and will likely trigger a “hubbub of clashing critics”. The New York Herald Tribune criticized the film as a "bombastic drama" that confused audiences.

While Tom Milne from the Time Out Film Guide praised the “great performance” and “wonderful use of eschatological backdrops”, Leonard Maltin only discovered an “overheated melodrama ” full of “laughable dialogues and sledgehammer music”. The lexicon of international film saw the film in its shortened final version "mutilated into an intrusive colportage".

literature

  • Mitchell Wilson: None So Blind. Simon and Schuster, New York 1945

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Raymond Durgnat in his Renoir biography interprets the end positively: The couple stays together, Scott returns to Eve. Colin Davis contradicts this: It remains to be seen whether Peggy and Tod's marriage will last, and in the final shots Scott seems like a ghost that cannot break away from the dead that haunt him in his dreams. "The liberating fire at the end of the film is too reminiscent of the flames in Scott's nightmare [...] it is unclear whether the flame signifies the possibility of a trauma overcome or its endless continuation into a future that only repeats the past." (Colin Davis) Cf. Raymond Durgnat: Jean Renoir. University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1974, pp. 261-268; Colin Davis: Post was Renoir. Film and the Memory of Violence. Routledge, New York / London 2012, p. 149.
  2. ^ A b Raymond Durgnat: Jean Renoir. 1974, pp. 261-268.
  3. ^ Bert Cardullo: Jean Renoir. University Press of Mississippi, 2005, pp. 24-27.
  4. June 2nd according to Internet Movie Database , June 7th according to Turner Classic Movies , June 8th according to Colin Davis: Postwar Renoir. Film and the Memory of Violence. 2012, p. 149.
  5. Franklin Jarlett: Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography. McFarland & Co., Jefferson (NC) 1990, p. 23.
  6. a b The woman on the beach in the dictionary of international filmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  7. See Foster Hirsch: The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. Da Capo Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-306-81039-5 , p. 114; Geoff Mayer, Brian McDonnell: Encyclopedia of Film Noir. Greenwood Press, Westport 2007, pp. 85 ff .; Andrew Spicer: Historical Dictionary of Film Noir. Scarecrow Press / Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham (Maryland) 2010, pp. 407 ff.
  8. ^ "Another original creation from the striking imagination of Jean Renoir. […] Its box-office merits may be limited by its disturbing strangeness, but it is a tour de force bound to provoke a hub of critical controversy. ”- Quoted from: Franklin Jarlett: Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography. McFarland & Co., Jefferson (NC) 1990, p. 24.
  9. "There's a line midway in this turgid drama of hard-breathing passion on the Maine coast, where a character demands," What are we doing here? " That question will find a resentful echo among many a puzzled audience. ”- Quoted from: Franklin Jarlett: Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography. 1990, p. 24.
  10. "A film noir in mood, with terrific performances, wonderful use made of the dead-end settings [...] Fragments, maybe, but remarkable all the same." - Time Out Film Guide, Seventh Edition 1999. Penguin, London 1998, P. 1015.
  11. "Overheated melodrama [...] Loaded with laughable dialogue and sledgehammer music cues; easy to see why this was Renoir's American swan song. ”- Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide. Signet / New American Library, New York 2007, p. 1545.