Beach Red

Beach Red is an old art house war film, made in 1967 by Cornel Wilde; a very talented man who was an expert actor, Olympic standard fencer, and also found the time and funding to direct several unusual films.



I’ve only ever seen Beach Red once, nearly 30 years ago one late night on BBC2. The thing that struck me about it at the time was it’s inspired title sequence, which features a series of paintings by two artists who seem completely unknown; Michael W Green and Takashi Tanaka. Even better, the title theme fits neatly into the plot, as our hero is an artist who ends up wounded and sharing a cigarette with a Japanese soldier who also happens to paint.



The release of the new Bond film A Quantum of Solace (nobody has ever named books as well as Ian Fleming) got me thinking about title sequences, and what a great art form they are.

It’s a shame they seemed to have almost died out, with some notable exceptions like Spielberg’s excellent Catch Me if You Can (2002) or Catherine Bigelow's Blue Steel (1990) whose title sequence was the only redeeming feature of the entire film. It was a horrible wonderful fetishistic examination of the Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special, which also happens to be my favourite revolver – in eight blissful sessions you could fire 48 rounds with the thing and not only would it never jam – but your wrists didn’t hurt afterwards.

Anyway, thanks to the wonder of You Tube, you can view the Beach Red title sequence here.

Nobody has posted the Blue Steel title sequence yet – some films are best forgotten…