Colin Davis (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Film as Shipwreck: Acting-Out and Working-Through in Jean Renoir's 'The Woman on the Beach' (1947)
The Woman on the Beach (released 1947) was Renoir’s fifth American film. Because of studio pressure, it was re-shot and re-edited, and Renoir's original edit has never been reconstructed. After the release of the film RKO bought out his contract, and he never made another film in the US. The film depicts three victims of trauma: the survivor of a ship torpedoed in the Second World War, a formerly great artist who has lost his sight, and his brutalised wife. It is about the impossible choice between life and death, about loss, fragmentation and the difficulty of surviving in a hostile environment. In particular, its thematic concerns rejoin Renoir’s difficulties as a filmmaker as it deals with the conditions of creativity in the aftermath of trauma.
