Summer Noir: THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH (1947)
Jean Renoir’s THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH (1947) is a cryptic, moody seaside noir that essentially ended his Hollywood career. As the spread of Nazism led to many famed European directors heading towards Hollywood (Ophüls, Lang), Renoir earned a contract at RKO. This particular film concerns a love triangle between traumatized WWII Coast Guard vet Robert Ryan, sharp-elbowed seductive lonely wife played Joan Bennett (who spoke French fluently & got along with Renoir) & her stoic blind painter husband Charles Bickford.
The spray of the sea & lingering fog add to the ghostly tone, although none of the characters are dead; Ryan is haunted by an at-sea submarine disaster (shown in a fantastic impressionistic montage at the start) while Bennett haunts the beached wreckage itself, akin to a siren or other classical illusions of lovelorn coastal wandering. Look out for Malibu’s Leo Carrillo State Beach & Sequit Point. There is a surprising cynicism in the film, whether considering the higher value of Bickford’s paintings now that he’s blind, or Ryan “testing” his blindness by leading him haplessly toward precipitous cliffs, all culminating in a fiery end. RKO head Charles Koerner, who greenlit the film & appreciated experimentation, unfortunately died in 1946 from leukemia. The new studio brass, more corporate & cautious, saw problems ahead.
A noted Santa Barbara screening (for mostly high-school/college students, while the film was misleadingly titled DESIRABLE WOMAN) went so poorly that RKO demanded Renoir spend the next six months re-shooting & re-editing half of the film, which explains the clipped 71 minute runtime. Renoir later said of Koerner: “I deeply regretted his unfortunate death. Had he not died, I believe I should have made twenty films for RKO.” The film was a box office bomb & the last film Renoir directed in Hollywood; even though he was set up with American naturalization papers, he found the studio experience so painful that he decided to not become a US citizen. What remains is a genre-defying seaside noir with ghostly overtones from one of the world’s greatest directors, worth seeking out.
