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 J. Coffee based on a novel by Stuart Engstrand.

Rosa Moline is the neglected wife of a smalltown Wisconsin doctor. She grows bored and becomes infatuated with a visiting Chicago businessman. She extorts money from her husbands patients and uses the cash to flee to Chicago, but the businessman does not welcome her. She returns home and becomes pregnant by her husband. The businessman has a change of heart and follows her to Wisconsin. He wants her back, but not her baby, so she attempts to abort by throwing herself down a hill, gets peritonitis and dies.To be sure, the script by Lenore Coffee offers little for her to do but run through the usual banalities of an infidelity yarn ... For those who have not been embarrassed by pretensions in a fairly long time, let us recommend the climax of this incredibly artificial filmthe final scene in which the lady, apparently burning up with a bad case of peritonitis, drags herself out of bed, pulls herself to her mirror, smears makeup on her face and gets dressed in disheveled finery to stagger forth toward the railroad tracks and death. With the clashing refrain of Chicago beating in her head, she pays for her selfish sins and follies. Quite an experience, wed say ... Not to be coy about it, we can see no Oscars in the offing for this film. ........

Source: Wikipedia