Shifting sands

Cinema's love affair with the beach goes far beyond golden sands, bikinis and Leonardo DiCaprio's bronzed torso. It stretches From Here To Eternity, via the horror flick and the war movie. Total Film associate editor Alan Morrison traces the shifting history of movie beach scenes

DANGER and desire, a fear of the unknown and a dream of utopia - no wonder cinema has always been fascinated by the beach. It's where the everyday reality of the land meets the sweet mystery of the sea, where the solid safety of the shore meets the power and unpredictability of the waves.

From Jaws to Local Hero, Big Wednesday to Saving Private Ryan, there's more to this enduring attraction than the visual impact miles of golden sands or dramatic rocky coastlines have on cinema audiences. When the sea's vast elemental force suddenly comes into direct contact with humanity, it's an excuse for every rule to be broken. People who would be embarrassed to wear a pair of shorts in the high street strip off and worship the sun. Heat merges with the steady beat of the waves, sending testosterone and adrenaline levels rising like mercury in a thermometer.

In quieter corners, those who rush through their nine-to-five routines discover a moment of connection. Once they discover the force of the ocean's energy, one lungful of salty air is all it takes to make them believe they're in tune with nature. They shut their eyes and a million wish-fulfilment movies play out against a sandy backdrop and a tidal soundtrack.

From the moment moving pictures were invented, filmmakers set out to capture the hedonism of the beach. As early as 1897, the American Mutoscope Company was training its rudimentary lenses on seaside day- trippers, creating silent reels with convoluted titles like A Jolly Crowd Of Bathers Frolicking On The Beach At Atlantic City. More than a century later, it's that same elusive combination of human joy and visual beauty that drives Leonardo DiCaprio's Richard to the ends of the earth in The Beach, the recent adaptation of Alex Garland's novel. Like the long-corsetted crowds in 19th century New Jersey, Richard is searching for an alternative to mundane reality. Like them, he finds it where the sea meets the shore, but 100 years of dark history have passed, and sharks, drug traffickers and human frailty tarnish his utopia.

Cinema's beach scenes do more than mesmerise their audiences - they are symbolic of the nation and era they are filmed in. Unfortunately, Scotland's climate forces filmmakers to tap into the country's psyche, rather than rely on images of sun-kissed sands. Directors attracted to Scotland's gorgeous scenery simply can't rely on shots of endless golden beaches, peppered with topless sunbathers and white bikini strap lines cross-crossing on naked bronzed flesh. Let's face it, flying the goose pimpled saltire just isn't a box office draw.

Instead, filmmakers revel in the poetic metaphor of the nation's beaches. Look at the powerful slow-motion opening of Chariots Of Fire (1981), as the athletes run along St Andrews' West Sands, or the ice- locked Fife seafront - and frozen hearts - of The Winter Guest (1997), a tale of frustrated adolescent sexuality, ageing and death.

At other times, movie makers tune into Scotland's couthy humour. In Whisky Galore (1948), the discovery of a shipwrecked cargo of bottles on a Barra beach allows the islanders to get one up on the authorities. In Local Hero (1983), the action moves to the mainland, with the village of Pennan in Aberdeenshire and - more importantly for the film's theme of unspoilt nature battling against American commercialism - Camusdarrach Beach near Morar providing the main locations. When the hermit Ben Knox, played by Fulton Mackay, cannily offers to sell his beach ("Would you give me a pound note for every grain of sand I hold in my hand?"), he knows that the Yank businessman can't match his near-mystical wisdom.

South of the border, though, the realism is as gritty as a towel rub-down with sandy suntan lotion. As soon as the bank holidays roll around, the chartered coaches head for Blackpool and Brighton, and English cinema isn't far behind. In Bhaji On The Beach (1993), a group of Indian women set up their deckchairs in the shadow of the Tower. So far so hackneyed, but at least the film substitutes the sari for the rolled-up trousers and knotted hankie of postcard cliches.

Cutting closer to the bone is Richard Attenborough's razor- wielding Pinky, who terrorises the Palace Pier in Brighton Rock (1947), or the Mods and Rockers who clash on Brighton Beach in Quadrophenia (1979). All good ammunition for the Belgian police, who must surely now believe wholeheartedly in the English stereotype of the thug looking for a rumble.

When it comes to beach movies, the British film industry will always be the 98-pound weakling with sand in its eyes, compared to Hollywood's Charles Atlas-sized bully. America has the sun, the sea and the romance, the surf-boards and Elvis Presley. Every summer, its radio stations play Surfin' USA by The Beach Boys, not Here Comes The Rain Again by The Eurythmics.

IF YOU had to pick one classic beach scene from cinema history, it would have to be Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolling in a passionate clinch on the wet sand in From Here To Eternity (1953). There's something undeniably erotic about the surf which laps at the lovers' ankles - why else would Sharleen Spiteri spice up her image by lolling around in the waves in the publicity shots for Texas's last album?

Behind the love scene's romantic splendour is a serious message. The film's backdrop is an army barracks on Hawaii in pre-Pearl Harbour 1941 - Lancaster is a sergeant and Kerr is the wife of his superior officer. The beach becomes the catalyst which encourages them to break society's rules. The lovers' rebellion takes place literally on the line between sand and sea.

There was something illicit but essentially pure in From Here To Eternity, but that ethos was replaced by something sleazier as American cinema moved into the Sixties. France, which had invented the bikini, quickly found the ideal figure to fill it. The impressively proportioned Brigitte Bardot squeezed into the tiny two- piece for a scorching performance under the St Tropez sun in And God Created Woman (1957). James Bond was shaken and stirred five years later, when the shapely figure of Honey Ryder emerged like a siren from the waves in Dr No.

But it was a company called American International Pictures (AIP) which really found success with that unbeatable cinema package: a beach, some bikinis and a bunch of horny teenagers. While post-war parents lived out the American dream - with a refrigerator in the kitchen and two cars parked outside the suburban home - their pampered offspring passed lazy days topping up tans, listening to rock'n'roll and chatting up the opposite sex. Put that on screen and it's an invitation to start some serious necking at the drive-in.

Beach Party (1963) was the first of AIP's mini-cycle of movies. Another six followed over four years, including cult classic Beach Blanket Bingo (1965). That film opened with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello serenading the audience as their friends did the twist on the open beach. The sex content was mild by today's standards and in retrospect, had a "nudge-nudge" quality reminiscent of Benny Hill sketches. Silent comedy genius Buster Keaton should have been pitied for being reduced to playing a fisherman who "accidentally" hooked one teenage starlet's bikini top.

AIP deliberately showcased their singing stars, but as the decade wore on, it was the beach - and beach life - that became the box office draw, not the actors. A glowing expanse of sand and six-feet high waves provided the location; a cool car and a surfboard were the necessary props. Devoid of the lust and love games of the beach party films, America's surf movies have better survived the test of time. From the Malibu kitsch of Gidget (1959), through the surfing safaris of The Endless Summer (1966) to the roller coaster swells of Big Wednesday (1978), here was a way of life that suggested the Cold War was happening on another planet.

Big Wednesday stands out from the crowd, though. There is a sense that its Malibu beach bums are getting a bit old for this sort of behaviour and, before the credits roll, the Vietnam War intrudes into their idyll. As flower power wilted and the Seventies took hold of America's collective consciousness in the real world, the beach became increasingly dangerous territory on the big screen.

PICTURE the scene: the sun is shining, kids are splashing in the shallows, the lifeguard is in his tower. And then this sanctified, sandy Eden is ruined forever by a single dorsal fin. Within seconds, a lilo is left bloody and torn, a mother is screaming for her son, panic sets in. With the 1975 movie Jaws, the director Steven Spielberg and a Great White Shark changed the history of the beach movie. Beach Blanket Bingo became Blood Beach (1981) - the horror flick demanded a deadlier price for teenage lust. In Apocalypse Now (1979), the boards only came out against the smell of napalm because Robert Duvall insisted "Charlie don't surf". When Tom Cruise was seduced into adultery and blackmailed in The Firm (1993), it happened on an exclusive beach in the Cayman Islands. When the Allied soldiers hit Omaha Beach in World War Two film Saving Private Ryan (1998), it meant instant death in a hail of bullets.

What has happened to the beach, which for decades, symbolised refuge from the stormy seas, and gave a glimmer of hope for Robinson Crusoe-style survival? It is languishing under a thundercloud of millennial angst. We're at a point where cinema prefers to hike into the shadowy forests of The Blair Witch Project rather than bask in the sunshine. Now even the seemingly paradisiacal Thai landscape of this year's The Beach collapses in tragedy, on screen and off. Danny Boyle's movie will be remembered as much for the environmental protests that raged on set during filming as for its cinematic impact.

The celluloid beach is more a state of mind than a geographical place. As movie directors continue to be drawn to that boundary between land and sea, audiences are likely to see plenty more shifting sands

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