Numerootno
A story that's too fascinating to pass by...
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
lauraspurling
Don't care what other reviews say, I loved this film. It's entertaining and sometimes very funny. If you like Bette Davis, you'll love this.
bkoganbing
Any other actress than Bette Davis couldn't have even made this trashy a film rate as high as it does. Bette was winding up her contract with Warner Brothers and Jack Warner gave her a stinker as a going away present. So Bette does what Bette always did when she got a part like Rosa Moline, just shout her way through and pull out all the restraints.For reasons that defy any belief Bette thinks she's way much better than the other citizens of her small Wisconsin town. Or at least destined for better things. How she gets them is to seduce a millionaire played by David Brian who has a hunting lodge in the area. He lives in Chicago and she dreams of going to Chicago like it was the Emerald City. And a few emeralds wouldn't be bad either.The problem is that she's married to kindly country doctor Joseph Cotten who's content with his life. That's a good deal of the problem with this film. Cotten is one of my favorite players, he's a person of great class always in his prime years. The man definitely qualified for sainthood. Davis looks so bad because Cotten is so good. The two have no chemistry at all together. That in a strange way helps the film which is about a pair of unhappy marrieds. But there was no way Cotten could have done much with a character who is as big a milksop as Dr. Moline.You will look far and wide among thousands of cans of film or DVDs or VHSs and will never find a character in any of them as incredibly self centered as Bette Davis's Rosa Moline. Everyone quotes her 'what a dump' line, but she's constantly saying even to herself 'I'm Rosa Moline' as if Hershey wraps her fecal matter and sells it as chocolate.And talking about a dump, when she reaches for the big moment Brian takes one royal dump on her. But that doesn't deter Bette in the slightest. She has no conscience whatever even to committing a couple of murders.Max Steiner's original music earned Beyond The Forest an Oscar nomination. Within his original score is interwoven the classic popular song Chicago which acts like a siren call luring Bette to what she feels will be good times and good living in the Windy City with Brian.Beyond The Forest is well remembered by Davis fans because of how she gave one of the most brazen and overacted performances in the history of cinema to breathe life into an unbelievable character.
Doctor_Mabuse1
BEYOND THE FOREST (1949)Cast: Bette Davis, Joseph Cotten, David Brian.Director: King Vidor.King Vidor's delirious BEYOND THE FOREST is best appreciated as a dry run for Bette Davis' grotesque tour-de-force as "Baby Jane" in Robert Aldrich's black-comic thriller.In such flamboyantly bizarre later films as DUEL IN THE SUN, THE FOUNTAINHEAD, RUBY GENTRY, WAR AND PEACE and SOLOMON AND SHEBA, Vidor demonstrated a perverse fetish for deliberate camp to the point of self-parody. In the universally derided BEYOND THE FOREST, Vidor indulges a florid Gothic Noir driven by Davis' insane performance as a wicked whore from hell.Seen in this light, BEYOND THE FOREST is revealed as an absurdist fore-runner of such wildly over-ripe Davis extravagances as HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE and THE ANNIVERSARY.Horror Note: The name of Count Dracula's homeland, Transylvania, literally means "Beyond the Forest": "trans" (beyond), "sylvan" (forest). Just thought you might like to know.Rating: OUTSTANDING.
Geofbob
It was interesting seeing this soon after seeing The Man Who Wasn't There, the Coen brothers would-be 40s film-noir. Both movies are set in small towns, have way-out plots involving violent crime and illicit love, and feature main protagonists trying to get out of a rut. But whereas the Coens' nouveau-noir plays it deadpan, philosophical and slow, and thereby risks boring the audience stiff; the genuine article with King Vidor at the helm, races along, goes way over the top, and glues the viewer to the screen.
Melodramatic and flawed though it may be, I don't go along with those who regard the movie merely as a camp vehicle for some arch Bette Davis overacting as the "evil" Rosa Moline. This film has genuine substance and potency, and Hedda Gabler-like Rosa's near-hysterical exasperation with the suffocating small town atmosphere - symbolised by the ever-present smoke and dust from the local sawmill - and with her dull, worthy, medico husband (Joseph Cotton), must have rung a bell with many American and other women in the stifling post-war years. Her "What a dump!" quite probably echoed their inner thoughts, as may her reluctance to have a baby (contrasted in the film with another woman's eighth, delivered by the good doctor). Moreover, despite Davis playing a woman at least 10 years younger than her actual age, her scenes with David Brian as her wealthy lover are truly erotic, and some of the lines may raise eyebrows even today.Those who dismiss this film should perhaps give it another chance, try to place it in the context of its era, and possibly ponder on how some of the "cool" masterpieces of today will be viewed by their grandchildren in 50 years time.
