Interesting story about failed relationships. Robert Ryan is excellent as the strong, yet vulnerable guy who has ghosts from the past. Lots of PTSD symptoms on display. Joan Bennett as the perfect tramp who knows what buttons to push. I did not know Renoir had a son who directed films. I think it was clearly too cerebral and artsy for the typical American artist. I liked it.

I enjoyed it. Mainly for Ryan but I thought it was an odd choice for Noir Alley. Just did not seem to fit the Noir genre.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Just did not seem to fit the Noir genre.

This is one of the films in the noir canon that's a rare exception. Almost all films classified as film noir contain at least one homicide. Renoir's film does not, but as I've said several times here in discussing the nature of the film noir style, homicide is not an essential element of film noir. Homicide comes as close as any element to being essential to film noir but if you go back to the seminal source which defined this style- Bordet and Chaumeton's Panorama du Film Noir Américain, there's really only one essential element to the noir style, which the authors characterized as "an unusual and cruel atmosphere", and The Woman on the Beach certainly has that, doesn't it? Panorama du Film Noir Américain was written in 1953, while this style was still being employed in American films, so the book does not (could not) define the boundaries of the style as they are accepted today, which is 1941 to 1959, and personally, I expand this range to 1940, because of William Wyler's version of The Letter.

Let's see, in Renoir's film, we have a bitter husband- an artist who is very bitter because he was blinded in an accident and of course can no longer paint. We've got his wife, who is very unhappy because the husband is bitter and unhappy. We've got a member of the Coast Guard who is suffering from PTSD. We've got the coast guardsman's girlfriend/fiance who functions as the film's redemptive female. We've got bitterness, sorrow, anger, fear, anxiety, lust, ambiguity, sexual tension, deception and on and on. The husband may be faking his blindness. The coast guardsman may or may not be thinking of murdering the husband. The wife may or may not be willing to go along with this. It's a psychological stew and every frame of the film is permeated with Borde and Chaumeton's "unusual and cruel atmosphere", and the film was shot and released right after WWII. It's film noir.

As I said recently in another thread, getting a hand on film noir is like trying to catch smoke in the air. The nebulous nature of the style is fertile ground for endless debate about just what is film noir and which films of the specified period are actually part of the canon.

If you want to explore Renoir as a film maker, you really need to look at his prewar French films- La Chienne (The Bitch), La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion), La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast, and La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game). La Chienne was remade in the US in 1945 as Scarlet Street and La Bête Humaine was remade in 1954 as Human Desire. Both films were directed by Fritz Lang and both films qualify as film noir, especially Scarlet Street, which is required viewing for students of film noir.

Agree on the cruel and unusual atmosphere of the film. And I have seen Scarlet Street (also with Bennet) and thought Duryea stole it, even from Edward G. He is very underrated, IMHO. Especially in Criss Cross. Bickford, too Is underrated too, given his roles in Johnny Belinda and The Big Country.
I will hunt down the the original French Renoir flicks.