Emotions fizzle in Jean Renoir's brooding character-driven drama which sees Robert Ryan tread a very fine line between bad guy and good. His shell-shocked coastguard isn't particularly likeable, and he doesn't come out of things looking too good - but then neither do the other two members of the prickly menage-a-trois in which he finds himself. The object of his passion is the title character, played with sullen countenance by Joan Bennett, a young woman married to a much older man (Charles Bickford) who was a famous painter until he lost his sight. But is he really blind? And does she really love Ryan whom she kisses with eyes open? It's a sombre little tale of secrets and deception played out in a curiously cloistered world, and its ambiguity about its characters prevents it from being as effective as it might have been.
Review of The Woman on the Beach
