Top Ten Beach Scenes
20th August 2009
By Joe Boden

I have the holiday blues, having returned from Portugal a few days ago, and so I’ve decided to draw up a list of the ten best filmic beach-set scenes. There’s surprisingly a lot of them, and I had to leave out a lot of my favourites, so I’ll give quick notable mentions to “Atonement”, “the Big Lebowski”, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, “Chariots of Fire” and “My Night at Maud’s”, all of which just missed out on the final ten. But anyway, on with the list! There will be spoilers for each of the films present, so only read for the ones that you’ve seen.

10. Jaws
Everybody knows “Jaws” for its scenes on the boat, where policeman Brodie (Rob Scheider), shark expert Hooper (Richard Deyfruss), and local fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) take to the oceans in attempts to capture the giant great white shark that’s hounding Amity Island, but the three best scenes in the film take place on the shores. The first is the film’s opening, where local youths frolic on the beach before being gobbled up by the film’s villain, who remains conspicuous by his absence for the majority of the film’s runtime. The second occurs about half an hour in, where Brodie – amongst other holiday makers and locals – first comes to suspect that something more than a filter feeder lives on the town’s shores, in which Spielberg utilizes Hitchcock’s trademark zoom-in close-up. And the third, perhaps the best and most undervalued in the film, comes at the climax, where Brodie – alone after the deaths of his comrades – manages to crawl across the sands and back to safety.

9. Quadrophenia
The best sequence in “Quadrophenia”, Frank Roddam’s film that starred Phil Daniels and was written (and sound tracked) by legendary band “the Who”, happens down in Brighton, where Roddam allows a gritty realism into his film in a battle sequence between the Mods (which include, amongst many others, Phil Daniels, Lesley Ash, Toyah Wilcox, and Sting) and the Rockers (one of whom is a young Ray Winston). It’s a great scene, which encapsulated scenes that dogged the news on a regular occurrence at the time but adds thematic purpose to it, and the whole Brighton sequence proves the making of Roddam’s film.

8. Saving Private Ryan
Which World War II scene do you include on a list of beach scenes? “The Big Red One” and “Atonement” came close, but the making of Spielberg’s war film is the opening scene, where Tom Hanks leads a battalion of American soldiers to French shores. What follows is a frenetic sequence brimming with intensity, drama, and violence. It takes you out of your seats and places you directly in the boots of these soldiers, showcasing the fear and the threat that these men were obviously in. I’m unsure if Spielberg has ever shot a better scene, because this one is absolutely astounding.

7. The Green Ray
The first of two Rohmer films in the list (believe me, I could have happily included more), “the Green Ray” is about Marie Riviere (who also co-wrote the film with Rohmer) attempting to find some sort of solace or happiness by going on a variety of different holidays. One of the best scenes in the film is where Riviere’s Sophie heads to the beach. Around her, holidaymakers have fun, splashing around and building sand castles. But Sophie simply walks around with a melancholy look on her face, unsure if she’ll ever find the involvement with society that she is looking for. It’s a truly tragic scene.

6. The Seventh Seal
If there’s anybody that you would less like to see on a beach than old ladies who don’t want tan lines, it’s Death, but this nightmare comes true for Antonius Block (Max von Sydow). The opening sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s supposed masterpiece (personally, I prefer both “the Silence” and “Through a Glass Darkly”) is beautifully shot in sumptuous black and white, and it’s truly a startling image to see the dense blackness of Death’s robes against the pale sandy beaches of Sweden. The film will go on to achieve greatness in the later scenes around the Scandinavian countryside, but this beach opening is brimming with drama, intensity, and a dream-like surreal feel that gives the film a perfect start.

Block and Death sit down for some beach-set chess.

5. From Here to Eternity
What?! Only at number five?! I can hear you now, because “From Here to Eternity” has become one of the most loved and iconic beach scenes ever put on film, and I love it too, just not quite as much as the four above it. One of my earliest film-watching memories is sitting around my granddad’s house, watching Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr – he a navy man and she the wife of his commanding officer – rolling around on the beach as the melodramatic music begins to swell behind them. It’s a breath-taking scene, the epitome of Hollywood romance, and beautifully shot. The image of the waves splashing up against these two, forced to the outskirts of society in order to hide away their love, is one that will live with me (and most other peoples’ too, I guess) for as long as I’m watching films. Which will probably be forever.

4. Some Like it Hot
“Some Like it Hot” is perhaps Billy Wilder’s most loved film, and although it’s not exactly my favourite (“the Apartment” for the win!), it does play host to some very funny sequences. To pick one would be to trivialize the rest of the film’s iconic comic set-ups, but the beach scene is as good of a pick as any. The staple of this scene, like most of the others in the film, is the classic comic chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, who have gone undercover as women in an all-girl brass band to escape the clutches of the mob. Curtis, now in a different disguise as an English socialite, is attempting to court Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane, leading to hilarious beach-set consequences.

3. Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Copolla has made three films better than “the Godfather”. The first, and the lease controversial, is its spectacular sequel. There’s also “the Conversation”, a masterful exercise in Hitchcockian suspense. And finally, there’s the finest Vietnam War film ever made, “Apocalypse Now”. Like the Russian WWII film “Come and See”, this film flits willingly from the elegant or comic to the brutally violent, and there’s no clearer example than the beach scene. The day before sees surfing, barbeques, and general frivolity, leading up to a napalm-fuelled bombing on the morning after. It’s a stark contrast, and a deep condemnation of the ridiculousness and the contradictory nature of war. It also saw home to one of the most iconic movie lines of all-time, with Robert Duvall’s surf loving general pipe up with “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”

2. Pauline at the Beach
Basically all of this film, which is Eric Rohmer’s second best behind “Chloe in the Afternoon”, is set at the beach, and so it’s a little bit of a cheat to include it here, but I think it deserves a slot simply because of its sumptuous photography of this quaint French beach and its fine characterization. It sees the titular Pauline (Amanda Langlet) go on holiday with her Aunt who, after fending off some romantic advances but succumbing to others, attempts to teach Pauline about the inner workings of romance. However, it’s not romance that Pauline learns about, but instead the insecurities and the general stupidities of adults. It’s a fine film, with pitch perfect tone and some beautiful shots of one of France’s beaches.

1. The 400 Blows
Is there any other scene, let alone beach scene, which acts as a testament to the power of cinema as much as the climax of “the 400 Blows”? I’m not sure there is, because there’s such palpable drama in this scene, as Antoine Doinel (a young Jean-Pierre Leaud) runs from a young offender’s camp and towards the open sea, the sand beneath his feet. Francois Truffaut’s film, which was semi-autobiographical, shows a young boy who is put through a series of challenges (usually due to the neglect of his parents, who always have better things to do) before finding a home in the movie houses of Paris. Petty crime comes next, and soon he finds himself locked up. Leaud went on to become one of the best known actors of the New Wave, sitting there alongside Belmondo and the incomparable Anna Karina. He went on to star in such classics of the movement as “Week End”, “the Mother and the Whore”, and the other three films in Truffaut’s quadrilogy, but he would never quite match this performance in this 1959 film. As far as child performances go, this is up there with the very, very best of them, with Leaud capturing the alienation and the self-doubt of the neglected child beautifully. It’s a moving performance that plays on your emotions but never once strays into melodrama or cheap tactics. The rest of the series, the best of which are “Antoine et Colette” and “Stolen Kisses”, don’t quite live up to this fine film, but how could they? This film captures childhood innocence which, slowly but surely, is corrupted but never compromised, and although the later films continue this character’s legacy in a manner that is acceptable and logical, they can’t hope to match the sheer emotion that “the 400 Blows” conveys. And this beach scene, which shows how a child’s spirit can’t be compromised by even the most difficult of challenges, is the perfect ending – both inspiring and dramatic – for a very brilliant film.