Beyond the Forest

Beyond the Forest is a 1949 American film noir directed by King Vidor, and featuring Bette Davis, Joseph Cotten, David Brian, and Ruth Roman. The screenplay is written by Lenore Coffee based on a novel by Stuart Engstrand. The film marks Davis's last appearance as a contract actress for Warner, after eighteen years with the studio. She tried several times to walk away from the film (which only caused the production cost to go through the roof), but Warner refused to release her from their employment contract. She remembered the project as "a terrible movie", and her death scene at the end of the film as "the longest death scene ever seen on the screen". Plot Rosa Moline is the dissatisfied, restless wife of Lewis, a small-town Wisconsin doctor. She is easily bored, uninterested in her husband's career or in anything to do with her current circumstances. She has long desired a glamorous life, in a world where she can have expensive things and meet truly interesting people. For over a year, she has been having an affair with Neil Latimer, a Chicago businessman who owns the local hunting lodge. Tired of waiting for him to ask her to marry and move to Chicago, Rosa demands the money owed from Lewis' patients - who are often slow to pay his bills but pay him in produce or with odd jobs - to finance her trip to the city.