Michel Boisrond has made rather mediocre movies in an undistinguished career.
"Un Soir Sur La Plage" is relatively interesting;the cast includes highly talented Jean Dessailly,Martine Carol,a cast against type Michel Galabru as the cop (whereas he was essentially a comic actor then ,in such comedies as "The Gendarmes series " where he would team up with De Funes and Genevieve Grad ,here cast as Carol's daughter).The biggest surprise is sixties starlet Daliah Lavi as a simple-minded nymphomaniac girl who is murdered on the beach.
The story is essentially a whodunit :in Martine Carol's house,there are many people (too many people actually) and they all have a reason to get rid of her ;do not expect a tour De force à la Agatha Christie :the solution is banal.
More interesting than the plot : the subjects which are hinted at : abortion,still illegal in 1961,and even euthanasia (although Cayatte and Richard Pottier had already broached the latter in the fifties ) And the last picture ,with the cop and his culprit in the car ,makes the ending less trite it might have seemed
"Un Soir Sur La Plage" is relatively interesting;the cast includes highly talented Jean Dessailly,Martine Carol,a cast against type Michel Galabru as the cop (whereas he was essentially a comic actor then ,in such comedies as "The Gendarmes series " where he would team up with De Funes and Genevieve Grad ,here cast as Carol's daughter).The biggest surprise is sixties starlet Daliah Lavi as a simple-minded nymphomaniac girl who is murdered on the beach.
The story is essentially a whodunit :in Martine Carol's house,there are many people (too many people actually) and they all have a reason to get rid of her ;do not expect a tour De force à la Agatha Christie :the solution is banal.
More interesting than the plot : the subjects which are hinted at : abortion,still illegal in 1961,and even euthanasia (although Cayatte and Richard Pottier had already broached the latter in the fifties ) And the last picture ,with the cop and his culprit in the car ,makes the ending less trite it might have seemed