Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302011012
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6302011019
Label: MGM (Warner)
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Release Date: 1998-09-01
Running Time: 97
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Theatrical Release Date: 1949-10-21

Customer Rating:
Summary: Madame Bovary in Wisconsin!
Comment: Beyond the Forest is the story of Madame Bovary by Flaubert, and so it is going to be over the top all the way, as is the novel. This film is much loved in Europe, especially France, and this is so because Bette Davis captures the the spirit of Emma Bovary when she thrashes out against men at every turn, beginning with her husband, who is a doctor as in the novel.

In this version Bette Davis is not lured by the opera or by fashions of Paris; she wants to go to Chicago and frequent cocktail lounges and slick bars, with her well-heeled tycoon lover, who likes passionate women, who kiss with gusto(their kisses are unbvelievable), and dress for always for sex. Bette does this, and with tremendous enthusiasm and great artistry.
She is always working her way up to sexual encounters in this film; every move, gesture, outburst, tells us of her hot desiures. Near the houise she lives in are papewr mills with large phallic smoke stacks that bellow smoke and fire, like a hell for sex-driven dames.Beyond the forest lies that great encounters with men, in Chicago or any place where the atmospehere suggests heat and dirt.

The lines from this film are famous all over the world (What a dump!", immortalized in Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", and the ending, with the exchanges with the maid, is something that no version of Bovary could ever match. It is surreal, almost horrific,but youy cheer for this womman, crawling to the rail road station to get out of this town. It is extremely intense, almost Hitchkockian in its suspense.But then, King Vidor is dircting, in that late 40s style of his, showing raw passion outdoors on the ground, as in Duel In the Sun(see the ending to that one!) Bette Davis plays every key, if you will, to bring this version to your attention forever. She is never hampered by exaggerations, and so she uses them to great effect, and gives us a very feminist portrait of a woman on the verge of everything bad, who lets herself fall into the abyss(she literally jumps off a hill) with our applause. Who would want to live in Loyalton, Wisconsin? Noone, after bette Davis tells us abouit it. You'd have to be lobotomized to live in a dump like it.

Rosa Moline, Bette's character, wants everything, and in the big way; she has no class, no taste, no Christian goals, because she has been denied access to the male treasure chests, and wants her share of the goodies.
This Emma Bovary goes understandably mad with frustrations and needs that must have plagued every woman in 1949 who had a brain. The conformity, the same clothes, the same roads, restuarants, nosy people, small town bigotry and violence, the sheer noise of it all..Bette fights against this Norman Rockwell psychosis with great conviction.

See this film and know why Miss Davis is the greatest actress in the world.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: OVER THE TOP!
Comment: This film is SOOO over the top it will have you side-splitting with laughter (even though I dont think thats what was intended). One of the BEST "Bad Movies That We Love"!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Beyond the Forest ... and everything else!
Comment: What camp! This picture features Bette Davis in one of her vilest roles, and she lays it on so thick she's almost a parody of herself. She's married to a country doctor (played by Joseph Cotten) living in a one-horse town in Wisconsin; her lover (David Brian) is a rich Chicago tycoon. When she's had enough of the slow rural ways, she runs off to Chicago to be with Brian - only he jilts her, and she comes home with her tail between her legs. But not for long: when lover boy Brian has a change of heart and wants Davis back, she comes running. Along the way she kills a man, gets off, and then aborts her baby (by Cotten) by rolling down a hill. She becomes ill after that and dies at the end (the Hays office probably insisted: behavior like Davis's did not go unpunished in those days on the screen). Davis never liked this movie, but who else could get away with all this? It's also the picture with the famous line by Davis "What a dump," which sums up her feelings about the home she lives in in backwater Wisconsin.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Superior over-the-top Bette performance with gusto!!
Comment: I just bought the VHS of this very recently, not having seen it for at least 25 years.
Despite the film having below par production values, it is more than made up for by Davis palying her part to the hilt!
It has all the trademarks of an entertaining Bette movie; man hating/chain smoking/bitching and self centredness in the extreme.
For it's time it is little wonder it was 'banned' from some cinemas.
For sheer entertainment value, the scenes where 'Rosa' is clearly delerious and fevered are a delight to watch, bitchiness and intolerance go hand-in-hand as she is savagely determined to have her own way.
Could well have been a preparatory role for 'Blanche Hudson' in "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane"? 14 years later..As a hilarious 'kicking' scene in the film shows!..THOUROUGHLY ENTERTAINING
Unmissable!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten take you Beyond The Forest
Comment: "The ultimate portrait in Bette Davis's long gallery of evil dames." The New York Times

"I'm not just any woman. I'm Rosa Moline!" And Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) is not cut out for small-town life. She finds being in Loyalton, Wisconsin "like lying in a coffin and waiting for them to carry you out." She finds marriage to gentle counry doctor Lewis Moline (Joseph Cotton) a bore. And she's equally dissatisfied with the modest comforts of their house ("What a dump!"). What she does want ~ and she wants it with a passion ~ is life in the big city: Chicago. And she wants it with millionaire Neil Latimer (David Bryan), with whom she's having an affair. Entirely devoid of scruples, Rosa will go to any lenghts ~ evin murder ~ to satisfy her desires.

This film, banned by the Legion of Decency, stirred up a lot of controversy when it was released. The New York Times said: "Of all the no-good women Bette Davis has portrayed" this one is the most callous and calculated friend. "Her" selfishness and cruelties are on a virtually extrahuman plane." Forty years later, director King Vidor's steamy excersize in longing has become a cult film and a favorite with Davis admirers!

This is a fantastic Bette Davis classic, that I highly suggest to all.

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