561 - The Woman on the Beach, United States, 1947. Dir. Jean Renoir.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

561 - The Woman on the Beach, United States, 1947.  Dir. Jean Renoir.

When two men love the same woman, sometimes the men become friends anyway.

At least one of them tries to be.  The other one might have something else up his sleeve.

Scott and Todd both love Peggy.

Peggy and Eve both love Scott.

But Todd and Peggy are married.

And Scott and Eve are engaged.

Love can be so complicated.

Well, love, actually, is quite simple.  Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love is not jealous.  Love is not boastful or proud.

It is romance that is complicated.

Romance is jealous.  Jealous sometimes to the point of wanting to eliminate the third party.  The one that is causing the jealousy.  The one that is in the way.

Romance can be impatient.  Romance can be unkind.

Because romance is based on these feelings I have inside me that make me feel so wonderful when I am with the other person, and I want so badly to have these feelings all the time and not to allow anything to get in the way; therefore, I will do everything in my power to nurture and protect these feelings.

We have all been there.

But what if it gets even more complicated.

What if Scott is Lt. Scott Burnett of the United States Coast Guard, and what if he has post traumatic stress disorder from the time that his ship hit a mine and exploded.  What if he still has dreams of sinking to the bottom of the ocean and walking across the ocean floor, stepping over skeletons, and approaching the mysterious woman who comes to him, in his dreams, to love him.

The blonde women.  With the face of the brunette.

And what if Scott tries to marry his fiancee Eve right away, but she puts him off because she wants everything to be just right, and what if her delay leads to his stumbling into a relationship with Peggy.

And what if Eve's own brother Bill once dated Peggy.

And what if Tod is blind from the time he and his wife got drunk and got into a big argument and she threw a glass at him and the shards went into his face and somehow severed the optic nerve, behind both eyes, and what if he is a painter, a good painter, in the process of becoming famous, and his blindness immediately ended his life's pursuit and rendered him helpless in his vocation.

And what if Peggy is complicated.  And stays with Tod.  But falls for Scott.

As you can see, there is some drama going on here.

It is 1947, and RKO is making a romantic drama.  A kind of a film noir wherein they plan to bring on veteran Jacques Tourneur as the director.  But Joan Bennett, the star of the picture, insists on the Frenchman Jean Renoir.  After all, his reputation precedes him.  He made those great films in France in the 1930s, which by now have already become classics, which have people talking that maybe film can be art.  After all.  And here he is in America, having fled from France under German occupation, making American films for American studios.

Why not?

People tell the story of how the film was shown at a test screening and how it played poorly to the audience.  And that Renoir had to go back and reshoot scenes, and cast a new actress for one of the roles, and re-edit everything.  And how he did not make the movie he wanted to make.

I have not yet read of a comparison to Orson Welles with The Magnificent Ambersons or Touch of Evil--though they are probably out there--yet one gets the impression that Renoir felt, and his admirers feel, that the studio tampered with his film to the point of botching it.

Perhaps.

One certainly wishes he could see the film as Renoir intended to make it.  The director's cut.  Absolutely.  It may have been brilliant.  One suspects it had to be superior to the film-by-committee approach.

Yet the film that resulted from this very normal way of doing things--not that I am supporting test screenings for auteurs; just that I am observing that it was routine--is not so bad.  It is a solid RKO film from 1947.

It stars Robert Ryan.  And he is one of those actors whom one can watch regardless of the material.  Put his name above the title, and we will go see it.  And he delivers here.

So does Joan Bennett, whom you may or may not know, but she worked all the time in the 1930s and 40s.

Her husband is played by Charles Bickford, who played in so many movies you might know from that era, but in a role that you might not expect of him.  One that is more layered and complex than the stalwart characters you might be used to seeing him play.

In some ways this film has a simple plot.  In other ways it has richly layered and emotionally nuanced characters.  These are roles actors would enjoy playing.

It is a film that should also reward repeated viewing.


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If you're so afraid of ghosts, Lieutenant, what about that jacket you're holding.

The way you looked at that life jacket as if it were something out of a bad dream.

We're pretty much alike, aren't we?  You're the first one that seems to know how I feel.