- The star of King Vidor's Beyond the Forest, a small-town housewife named Rosa Moline (Bette Davis), is one of the most amusingly unsympathetic characters ever to headline a film noir. Her story is presented as a tragedy, but honestly it is difficult to feel sorry for someone as awful as Rosa. In the film's first twenty minutes, she tricks an alcoholic named Moose (Minor Watson) into stumbling across some booze so she can sneak away and cheat on her husband (Joseph Cotten) with a cad named Latimer (David Brian). She later kills one of these men with a hunting rifle, but I won't spoil the surprise. When she's not on vacation, Rosa likes to blow off steam by belittling her Native American maid (Dona Drake) and running away from home.
- Although it is amusing enough to watch Bette Davis be terrible to everyone -- Rosa famously exclaims "What a dump!" when describing the family home to her much put-upon husband -- the film only really picks up steam in its second half when Rosa's trip to Chicago transforms into an imagined stream of accusations and dirty looks. Even the paperboy is momentarily terrifying, which is a real accomplishment. After the aforementioned murder, the completely unrepentant Rosa announces that she is pregnant, and things just go from bad to worse. The film drags on a bit at the end, but I certainly felt that Rosa ended up precisely where she belonged.
- Based on a novel by Stuart Engstrand.
