What an inept and muddled mess this film is. The setup is interesting enough: While out riding his horse, a shell-shocked Coast Guard Lieutenant on the cusp of marriage stumbles upon a femme fatal out gathering firewood near the beached hulk of a ship. He's immediately smitten. He escorts her home (on the pretense of carrying her firewood) where he also meets her blind artist husband.
Having fallen hard for the femme fatal (as you would, of course) he sets about trying to prove that her husband isn't blind at all. In the process, he almost kills him. Oops. Turns out he was wrong about the old guy faking it. No hard feelings, though. After that, the blind artist and the lieutenant become best buddies. Until the next time the Lieutenant tries to kill him, anyway. (A fishing trip in a typhoon goes badly; you'll just have to see it for yourself.)
Oh, and our lovelorn lieutenant takes a quick 60 seconds to dump his fiancee (lucky break for her!).
Everyone's motivations and goals (with the exception of the fiancee) keep shifting so that all the characters seem either erratic or just insane--it's hard to tell. They frequently declare their mercurial states of mind: "Let's face it, I'm not well!" being my favorite. But close runners-up were, "I'm a tramp!" and "Those paintings are my eyes!"
The dialogue and the score are frequently so inept as to be laughable. I would almost start to believe this movie for about five minutes at a stretch before some freshly idiotic event or line would cause me to burst out laughing.
*Nothing* in this film is to be believed, starting with the tragic accident that supposedly blinded the painter. We're told the femme fatal threw a drinking glass in his face. Somehow, this resulted in the optic nerves (to both eyes, no less) being severed, without leaving a mark on him.
What . . . ?
No wonder the good lieutenant thought he was faking it; I wouldn't buy that story either! Plus, the actor playing the blind artist seems to bustle around the film's sets (whether he's at home, on the beach, or at the coast guard station) as if he still had 20/20.
Speaking of unbelievable, I'm stunned that there are people here rating it as some kind of masterpiece--no doubt because it was directed by Jean Renoir and has a couple of surreal dream sequences.
They're not bad (the dream scenes), but they're not all that good either. And certainly not enough to save this shipwreck. Nor is a quick cameo by Granny Clampett.
Having fallen hard for the femme fatal (as you would, of course) he sets about trying to prove that her husband isn't blind at all. In the process, he almost kills him. Oops. Turns out he was wrong about the old guy faking it. No hard feelings, though. After that, the blind artist and the lieutenant become best buddies. Until the next time the Lieutenant tries to kill him, anyway. (A fishing trip in a typhoon goes badly; you'll just have to see it for yourself.)
Oh, and our lovelorn lieutenant takes a quick 60 seconds to dump his fiancee (lucky break for her!).
Everyone's motivations and goals (with the exception of the fiancee) keep shifting so that all the characters seem either erratic or just insane--it's hard to tell. They frequently declare their mercurial states of mind: "Let's face it, I'm not well!" being my favorite. But close runners-up were, "I'm a tramp!" and "Those paintings are my eyes!"
The dialogue and the score are frequently so inept as to be laughable. I would almost start to believe this movie for about five minutes at a stretch before some freshly idiotic event or line would cause me to burst out laughing.
*Nothing* in this film is to be believed, starting with the tragic accident that supposedly blinded the painter. We're told the femme fatal threw a drinking glass in his face. Somehow, this resulted in the optic nerves (to both eyes, no less) being severed, without leaving a mark on him.
What . . . ?
No wonder the good lieutenant thought he was faking it; I wouldn't buy that story either! Plus, the actor playing the blind artist seems to bustle around the film's sets (whether he's at home, on the beach, or at the coast guard station) as if he still had 20/20.
Speaking of unbelievable, I'm stunned that there are people here rating it as some kind of masterpiece--no doubt because it was directed by Jean Renoir and has a couple of surreal dream sequences.
They're not bad (the dream scenes), but they're not all that good either. And certainly not enough to save this shipwreck. Nor is a quick cameo by Granny Clampett.