Such a Pretty Little Beach – Une si jolie petite plage

Saturday 1st July 2023

The title today may fit the beach I am parked up at, but its French title is of a 1949 French noir film I watched and enjoyed last night.

During the cold and rainy off-season a man arrives in a seaside town and, giving his name only as Philipe, checks into the only hotel which remains open. His arrival arouses curiosity and a degree of suspicion, as people note that he appears to know the area, yet gives no explanation for his presence at that bleak time of year in the dead-end town.

I could avoid spoilers, but the start of the film comes with a written warning on the screen that says that because this concerns state-assisted war orphans, don’t assume that all war orphans are criminals. A spoiler of course..

Philipe is grieving the woman who took him away from his life of poverty as a petty criminal. She has just been brutally murdered. He naturally is empathetic towards a 15 year old war orphan who is working in almost slave-like conditions at the hotel. But the boy is wiser than he looks. At one stage he says to Philipe, to his and the viewer’s great surprise, ‘You really did the old bag in, didn’t you?’

It’s a quirky film with brilliantly cinematography which shows the seaside town at its worst, and a great soundtrack, even with some Edith Piaf.

Its theme is chiefly of wounded innocence, and it’s suits the noir genre so well.

I have digressed. But there was a lot of heavy rain today, so not much outdoor action to write about. I worked a route out around the villages of Melby and Sandness and their beaches.

The rain was only light until midday, just as I got to Sandness’s graveyard, which took my interest as it is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The two buried here, died when their ship was sunk not far from this coast. Its wreck is a popular dive now.

Be more amused by the photo of the grave on the top right, organised by the Lerwick Spurs Football Club.

School’s out for summer. All closed up. I’ve been warned to expect more people around the coastline and it’s beaches. The last couple of days I have seen nobody, as in zero. So let’s assume there are four times as many. I’ll set a maths problem of four times zero, to suggest that it don’t think it will be that much busier.

From just after midday, with the exception on a 30 minute wet wander in the early evening, it was a van day, with the relaxing sound of the rain pounding on the roof. The cricket from Lord’s and then Edgbaston, kept me amused.