Table of Contents

Introduction.- THRESHOLDS AND BOUNDARIES.- Stations.- i. The station as stage.- ii. Lovers’ separations.- iii. World War 2.- Wartime homecoming.- iv. Stations and death.- WATER.- i. The waterside.- Ship and boat departure.- ii. On water.- iii. In and under water.- KEY ENDING TROPES AND MOTIFS.- i. Sunsets.- ii. Voice-overs.- iii. ‘Let’s go home’.- iv. Looking at or addressing the camera.- v. Emblematic shots.- vi. Theatricality.- BEACHES.- Introduction.- Early History.- i. Silent Cinema.- ii. The 1930s.- iii. World War 2.- Concepts and development.- i. The Woman on the Beach.- 1954 and after.- ii. Beach holidays.- iii. Tabula rasa.- iv. Empty beach.- v. Renewal.- Auteurist inflections.- i. La nouvelle vague and after.- ii. Beach auteurs: Fellini, Kurys, Ozon, Kitano.- Themes and motifs.- i. Death.- Dying.- Suicides.- ii. War.- iii. Hallucination, breakdown and insanity.- iv. The family and childhood.- v. Mourning and solitary reflection.- vi. Home movies.- vii. Fantasy.- viii. Apocalypse and post-apocalypse.- ix. Paradise and lost paradise.- x. Other categories and Conclusion.- Appendix: Films with beach endings.- Bibliography.

About the Author

Michael Walker has written for Movie, Film Dope, CinéAction, Hitchcock Annual and Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism. He has contributed to The Movie Book of Film Noir (1992), The Movie Book of the Western (1996), Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays (1999), Style & Meaning (2005), and A Companion to Steven Spielberg (2017). He is the author of Hitchcock’s Motifs (2005) and Modern Ghost Melodramas (2017).