This elusive, nightmarish tale (1947) of a coast guard officer (Robert Ryan) and his near tragic dalliance with the fetching wife (Joan Bennett) of a blind painter (Charles Bickford) is one of Jean Renoir’s most explicit portrayals of sexuality, but it seems to have undergone a mysterious obscuring in the final editing. Andre Bazin called it at once one of the most sincere and one of the most hampered of Renoir’s films—but it remains, apart from The Southerner, Renoir’s most impressive American work.