retrocollage
Unfortunately, Joan Crawford throughout the 1950s often found herself typecast in dead-end genre films that followed one story line: thick- skinned, frigidly cynical middle-aged woman meets opportunist crumbs, revealing herself to have a heart exactly as hard as melted butter. While it's true that playing the stormy and lovesick heavy guaranteed Crawford continued work and starring roles well after the usual actress expiration date of that era, it also meant that her performances in such dramas degenerated into caricatures of the roles she had played in the previous decade.The present story is no exception. A wealthy widow takes possession of her beach house, and promptly encounters several obstreperous neighbors who may be swindlers, an overgrown beach-boy gigolo, a negligent and ignorant woman real estate agent, a cunning, understated "beach-cop," and the mysterious death of the beach house's previous tenant. After several prickly encounters with this motley crew, widow Crawford's icy, sarcastic reserve thaws in record time, and she surrenders to the charms of said gigolo. Happiness seems to be just around the corner--but is it real? Will the solution of the mystery ruin our heroine's chance at a new life? Cue orchestral diminished chord...FEMALE ON THE BEACH is not Joan Crawford's finest hour, sad to say. While it's far from her worst picture (alas, they became worse still), it's best enjoyed as a kitschy, campy romp. Make plenty of popcorn--covered with lots of melted butter--and come prepared to laugh.
jamesabutler44
This is the type of film that used to be featured on American Movie Classics before they ruined the channel with commercials and more recent fare.Fortunately, I caught it on AMC and taped it years ago. I pull it out every now and then on a lazy rainy day for pure enjoyment. Just seeing Crawford with that Godawful makeup, heavy brows, and mannish bob is a riot. Her scenery chewing acting style is also a hoot. She plays it like she's trying to get an Oscar. She takes every opportunity to show off her figure also. There's even a scene where she's getting out of bed in baby doll pajamas no less! I wish they would release this on DVD!
moonspinner55
Glossy trash has wealthy, beach front-living Joan Crawford wooed by shady gigolo Jeff Chandler. Low-brow fun, an adaptation of Robert Hill's play "The Besieged Heart", with steamy clinches and page after page of florid dialogue. Director Joseph Pevney seems to be a perfect match for Crawford: he's obviously tough on the unyielding actress and doesn't let her get away with many "Mildred Pierce"-isms. Crawford also seems to have been personally swayed by hunky Chandler, who doesn't let her hog the spotlight. However, neither star is guided with a trace of self-effacing humor, which turns the proceedings into straight-faced camp. Some of the lines are howlers. **1/2 from ****
bmacv
Few case studies of Hollywood stardom rival Joan Crawford's in their curiosity. A certified star from the time of last silent movies and the first talkies, she fell from favor more than once only to be restored in ever newer incarnations, largely through the boundless reservoirs of her will. And if there is an era that defines the Crawford that we remember most vividly, it's the decade-plus, from her Oscar-winning turn as Mildred Pierce in 1945 through her last `really top' movie, The Story of Esther Costello in 1957. In her valiant assault, as she moved into middle age, against time's winged chariot, she had vehicles built around her that helped define the canons of camp but retain a fascination that transcends camp. This dozen or so includes: Humoresque, Flamingo Road, her second Possessed, The Damned Don't Cry, Harriet Craig, This Woman Is Dangerous, Sudden Fear, Torch Song, Queen Bee and Autumn Leaves. Though we may howl at some of them (or at parts of them, for they range from rather good to quite dreadful), we're always aware – at times discomfitingly so – of the human drama that underlies and links them all: the Joan Crawford story.In Female on the Beach, she plays a recent widow taking up residence in the coastal California home her wealthy husband owned. Her arrival proves ill-starred, for a broken railing on its deck marks the spot where its previous tenant – another woman battling age and isolation – plunged to her death. Did she jump or fall – or was she pushed? It unfolds that she had fallen prey to a youngish beach bum (Jeff Chandler) operated by a pair of older con-artists (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer); Crawford is targeted as their next mark.Obsessively guarding her privacy, however, she proves to be a tough nut to crack. Her too familiar realtor (Jan Sterling) is swiftly shown the door when she makes the mistake of taking Crawford for granted. And Chandler, turning up unbidden in Crawford's kitchen one morning, encounters that same rough hide; asked how she likes her coffee, she icily replies `Alone.'But tanned muscles and prematurely grey temples do not count for nothing in affluent oceanside communities, so Chandler slowly wins over the armored Crawford. But the course of true love never did run smooth, as the Bard of Avon warns us. Crawford just happens to find the dead woman's indiscreet diary (it's hidden away behind a loose brick in the fireplace!), a sad yarn of being cheated in card games and bilked for loans by the larcenous old couple while being strung along by Chandler.No fool she, Crawford hands the gigolo his walking papers. But then she sinks into a sump of liquor and self-loathing, staggering around waiting the phone to ring like a torch-carrier out of a Dorothy Parker story. Finally, of course, Chandler does call and, better yet, wants to marry her! But fate has a few final cards to deal, including an uninstalled fuel pump Crawford had bought for Chandler's boat....That staple of genre cinema, the woman-in-jeopardy thriller, generally features dithery, hysterical young things as straw victims. Crawford in jeopardy, by contrast, turns all the conventions upside down. The coquettish bulldozer she has constructed of herself at this menopausal juncture in her life, with her face as fiercely painted as a Kabuki mask, seems designed to repel – to crush – any threats. (Of course, like most such postures of domination and intimidation, It's a construct of fear – her fears of falling short as a serious actress, as a mother, as a woman; fears of aging and no longer being able to lure her directors and costars between the sheets; fears of not mastering her own unachievable goals.) The facade of control and self-sufficiency proves all the more arresting when it comes under siege from the cumbersome twists and turns of these situations held over from nineteenth-century melodrama.Hence, Female on the Beach and its ilk. An indomitable woman of a certain age flies solo into the perils of mid-life, only to triumph against all odds. That was the life Crawford was living at mid-century, the life reflected in these films, by turns appalling and transfixing. Not since the Brothers Grimm has such a string of cautionary tales been issued.
