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Beaches: Early History

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Abstract

Beach endings in films only emerged slowly. This chapter covers the early years, beginning with the films of D.W. Griffith in the US and Léonce Perret in France. Griffith’s films are also related to American painters of beachscapes. With two further silent films, a comparison is made with the ending of the novel on which the film is based. In the 1930s, examples of beach endings are all from Japan or France, a reflection of the lack of location filming in Hollywood films of the era. With World War 2 films with beach endings, the propaganda function of a film made during wartime is related to the structure of the endings.

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Walker, M. (2020). Beaches: Early History. In: Endings in the Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31657-0_6

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