A Day at the Beach

Special in many ways before you even start watching, this miniature is not desperate to be liked and is in fact rather admirable for its commitment to being unlovely.

If you're wondering where they're going with this, then you may be disappointed; it is a snapshot of the miserable lives that play out in plain site when you truly don't care about anything but forgetting.

Often painful but not quite excruciating, this vision of a man living a day as if it might truly be his last in freedom though he seems anything but free in practice.

An exorcise in the pretentiousness of vulgar people always accompanied by a fairly agreeable child star.

Polanski seems like he can do no wrong in his writing of this.

This very peculiar movie, undoubtedly the most obscure in Roman Polanski's filmography, surfaced from its vault at Facets Multimedia in Chicago for a week's run a number of years ago. I don't believe it had ever been released before, and not too many people saw it in Chicago either. The extremely savvy film buff that I saw A Day at the Beach with hated the movie; but I, perhaps perversely, kind of liked it for its offbeatness and shabby atmosphere. Polanski wrote the screenplay and was originally set to direct this tale of a man wandering through a rundown British seaside resort and encountering odd characters. Although it can't be considered a major or fully successful piece of work, the movie deserves to be available. It continues to nag at my memory in a way that many better films don't. Its "lost" status lends a certain mystique to the film in and of itself, of course; we buffs are always intrigued by the fruit just out of reach.

Ironically, while Roman Polanski was in Europe the same year The Manson Family would violently crash Sharon Tate's party, he was preparing for two movies with the word DAY in the title: scouting to direct THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN while adapting an obscure Dutch novel for A DAY AT THE BEACH, a film so independent it feels like something more of the John Cassavates wheelhouse...

And this BEACH centers on a raving drunken British man's beeline trek through a mostly barren Danish beach tourist town during sporadic rain bursts, and instead of tourists are an abandoned lot of outdoor and indoor cafe or curio shop or liquor store or pub owners wherein he gets more intoxicated and thus more pontificating and moody along the way, mostly trying for as much drink for as little money possible: a kind of progressively-blasted human coupon...

The primary twist is he's not alone... Tagging along is his niece who's really his daughter from surly starting point ex Fiona Lewis, and while future HIGHLANDER beauty Beatie Edney is a good enough child actress, providing both realistic screaming tantrums and gaping toothless grins whenever needed, her mere existence is to underline just how flaky, downright selfish and dangerously neglectful Mark Burns's Bernie's traipsing-around plight really is...

For example, in one scene he's being hit-on by an openly gay/super effeminate storefront couple... one played capably by Peter Sellers billed as A. Queen; at the same time, right outside, little Winnie gets stuck in some netting along the beach's planked walkway... a path that winds through the sand in a location that's even more art-house from the incessant tempest...

It's never entirely clear what the actual plot or purpose is, but Burns's character is a terrific drunk that'd make Charles Bukowski envy with a mobile, existential life all mapped out, at one point telling a pretentious (passed-out) poet's sexy wife, "I'll be hungover tomorrow, but the next day meet me at noon at..."

As this lost-for-decades curio is, by the end, a dizzying odyssey by first time director Simon Hesera and, while frowned upon by writer/producer Polanski for lack of proper composition, it's through a rip-roaring drunkard's eyes that we're eyeing everything, so in actuality the location is more what the character experiences than the audience visualizes.

I saw this film at Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver around 1994/95. The lead character is a pathetic drunk who takes his daughter for a day out. I believe it is set in a Danish seaside town. Certainly northern European of some sort. It is a series of episodes in a search for drinks, and the little girl ends up having to rescue her drunk dad. An allegory of life and the parent/ child relationship, perhaps. Peter Sellers is hilarious as a homosexual stall keeper. The atmosphere is relentlessly bleak, dark, ominous, and finally it rains. Could be depressing if the viewer has a family member similarly afflicted by alcoholism.

Too bad it is not available. Would love to see it again.

I recently had a look at the comments about this film. I am rather amazed that all of them attribute this movie to Roman Polanski. As IMDb writes it, this movie was directed by Simon Hesera, my late brother, and not Roman Polanski. It was his first major feature movie, saluted as a masterpiece by movie critics or other directors (such as Michelangelo Antonioni). Time has gone by, and for some unknown reason, in spite of the fact that Polanski is only mentioned as the one who adapted the story to the screen, the name of the director was skipped and the movie added to Polanski's curriculum. I was 17 years old and remember well the time when this film was made. Polanski, Peter Sellers and my late brother were all good friends and the movie was made "between friends". The story goes that my brother was given, with this sad movie and its tragic subject, a difficult first chance at directing a movie. Had he been given another subject, happier, funnier or more commercial, he would have made a hit and started a popular career as director, no less than Polanski's, who recognized my brother's genius.