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Title: Not Renoir's best by a mile.
Review: Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947)Trite, predictable noir-esque romance, not at all the kind of thing one would expect from a top-notch director like Renoir. Simple plot: military man (Robert Ryan) is suffering from what we would now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Gets scared. Wants to marry his girlfriend (Nan Leslie) immediately. But then meets seductive, sexy married chick (Joan Bennett) with blind ex-painter husband (Charles Bickford). Becomes obsessed with sexy chick (at which point girlfriend becomes almost a cameo in the film, rather than the main character she's set up to be; this is what I mean when I say you don't expect this level of filmmaking in a Renoir movie). Confrontation with husband. Repeat as necessary. You know the drill. I wonder if Renoir just needed the money? Some not-half-bad acting, but under no circumstances should you be expecting another Rules of the Game or Grand Illusion here. **
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