If the comments here are any guide, there are moves afoot to re-classify Beyond The Forest as an overlooked masterpiece. Unfortunately, the film itself doesn't offer much in the way of supporting evidence. The story is slight (no doubt curtailed by screen mores of the time), the script is leaden and neither has aged well. In fact, there's a nasty misogynist worldview that suffuses the entire movie, with poor Rosa Moline depicted as evil incarnate largely for being a woman with a sex drive and aspirations to escape a dull, dirty and depressing industrial town. Rose actually deserves to be much more of a heroine than Bette Davis strives to make her within the given constraints. You can certainly see why she was done with Warner Brothers after this one. On the other hand, there's not much to support the "so bad it's good" argument either. Contrary to Mr Albee's best myth-making efforts, Davis is not camp or over-the-top, and the script fails to deliver any quotable howlers. At best/worst, King Vidor's direction tends toward the histrionic, but you'd expect nothing less in this kind of melodrama. The truth is that Beyond The Forest is neither a neglected masterwork, nor a camp classic. It's a fairly routine B-movie that would be entirely forgotten were it not for Bette Davis making the best of a bad job.
Review of Beyond the Forest
