In modern-day Hollywood, where A-list actors wield more power than their own producers, it's not at all uncommon for a performer to step behind the camera and direct a picture once in a while. In recent years, George Clooney has earned high praise as a director (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, 2002), and Kevin Costner did the same in the 1990s (Dances with Wolves, 1990). But years ago, this sort of thing was exceedingly rare. One of the few actors to manage the trick was Cornel Wilde, who was best known as a matinee idol in Technicolor adventure films, but also directed a handful of surprisingly hard-hitting pictures. One of them, Beach Red (1967), is a bold anti-war story that was several years ahead of its time - at least on a thematic level. It's remarkable that a Hollywood player of Wilde's stature would have risked making it, but Howard Thompson of The New York Times was impressed, calling it Wilde's "best picture to date."

Wilde plays Capt. MacDonald, a combat veteran who is leading men into battle on a Japanese-held island in World War II. MacDonald is sick of watching people die, but one of his men, Sgt. Honeywell (Rip Torn), is ready and willing to kill in a moment's notice. Wilde cuts between images of battlefield brutality and the homefront where MacDonald's wife waits anxiously...and does the same thing for the Japanese soldiers. Beach Red could actually be considered a predecessor to Clint Eastwood's recent pair of World War II movies, Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), in that Wilde dares to suggest that there's not that big a difference between the men who fight on both sides of a conflict.

When Beach Red was released, its distributor tried to sell it on its bloodshed and nudity. But Wilde always insisted that it was a straight-up anti-war picture. It should be noted that the film also concerns itself with the concept of survival at all costs, a theme that runs throughout all of the pictures that Wilde directed. When an interviewer pointed this out, Wilde said that he felt the obsession might have arisen from his formative years, when his father fell ill and young Cornel was forced to become the family breadwinner.

Although he only managed to direct a handful of pictures, Wilde was very much committed to the craft. In an October, 1970 interview in Films and Filming magazine, he elaborated on his approach to editing: "I think that a cut from one scene to another should have an impact, should carry you from a certain degree of involvement and excitement to something else without letting you down...I really think that a good deal of happenstance editing still goes on, and part of my style is that I like to feel there is a reason and impact to every frame of film. Nothing should be wasted." Some critics at the time complained that Beach Red was too slowly paced, but Wilde definitely put his personal vision on the screen.

Wilde's filming process was just as specific, but obviously reflected his career as an actor: "I used to find so often in Hollywood that there was nothing more tedious than waiting around. Many directors used a stereotypical system of master shot, medium shot, over-shoulder shots, and then close-ups, with long pauses in between for cameras and lights to be adjusted. I got to my dressing room to paint or write- anything to keep my mind alive. So now my policy is to keep three camera crews working simultaneously, so that actors can move from one set-up to the next without delay." Not all the technicians were happy with this system. "I get the occasional protest," Wilde said, "but it isn't easy for anybody to complain that I'm working them too hard, because they can see that I'm working harder than anybody else myself."

Producer: Cornel Wilde
Director: Cornel Wilde
Screenplay: Clint Johnston, Donald A. Peters, Jefferson Pascal (based on the novel Sunday Red Beach by Peter Bowman)
Cinematography: Cecil R. Cooney
Editing: Frank P. Keller
Music: Antonino Buenaventura
Cast: Cornel Wilde (Capt. MacDonald), Rip Torn (Sgt. Honeywell), Dewey Stringer III (Mouse), Patrick Wolfe (Cliff), Burr DeBenning (Egan), Jean Wallace (Julie MacDonald), Linda Albertano (Girl in Baltimore), Jan Garrison (Susie), Gene Blakely (Goldberg), Genki Koyama (Col. Sugiyama), Fred Galang (Lt. Domingo), Dale Ishimoto (Capt. Tanaka).
C-105m.

by Paul Tatara