A film still almost completely unknown outside of die-hard film historians and avid fans of obscure '70s cinema, A Day at the Beach is usually referred to as a "lost" Roman Polanski film, in the sense that it was both physically lost for over two decades (due to mishandling by its distributor, Paramount) as well as the opportunity missed when Polanski wrote the script but had to bow out of directorial chores when his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson family. Had timing or circumstances been different and Polanski had brought his words to the screen, it would have certainly fit in with the increasingly dark, despairing tone of his early '70s work like Macbeth and Chinatown.

The story is another riff on the journey of an Anglo-Saxon alcoholic lout, a convention that's out of fashion now but which fascinated Hollywood all the way from Day of Wine and Roses to Arthur to Leaving Las Vegas. Here our protagonist lush is Bernie (Burns), a boozer who takes his young, polio-stricken neice, Winnie (Edney), out for a drizzly day at the Danish beachside where they encounter a colorful array of characters. Winnie is all too aware of her uncle's weakness and tries to keep him grounded for the excursion, but as night falls and the bars begin to call, she isn't sure he'll make it till morning.

Featuring delicate, evocative photography by the great Gil Taylor (The Omen, Star Wars) and some surprising bit parts (most memorably Peter Sellers, billed as "A. Queen," and Graham Stark as a pair of flamboyant beach vendors), A Day at the Beach is a fascinating mood piece if ultimately a minor entry in the Polanski filmography. Director Simon Hesera didn't really do much outside of this, so it's especially easy to read into the writer's contribution here along with the presence of two cast members from Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, Jack MacGowran (The Exorcist) and the always welcome Fiona Lewis (The Fury). Similarities to Polanski's Cul-de-sac, Knife in the Water and especially his short films like "Two Men and a Wardrobe" and "The Fat and the Lean" abound with the seaside doubling as a psychological force which drives the characters and threatens to consume some of them, with its changing rhythms during the day affecting the bustling crowd as well as the flow of the story.

Considering almost no one saw this film before a print was resuscitated in the 1990s, it's rather miraculous we have A Day at the Beach on home video at all. Code Red's DVD from 2008 is on par with many other Paramount catalog titles of the period; the film stock as that somewhat gritty look of the time with chilly fleshtones (think Don't Look Now or Let's Scare Jessica to Death), though it has a major issue we'll get into below. You don't get any extras here apart from the usual Code Red promos (for films like The Farmer and Choke Canyon), but that's understandable given the fact that the director's unreachable, the main actor's dead, and everyone knows why Polanski isn't on here.

In 2025, Indicator bowed the film on Blu-ray as a 4,000-unit limited edition in the U.S. and the U.K. featuring a new 4K restoration from the original negative. The result here is quite the surprise as it features a massive amount of additional image information, looking way less claustrophobic here and playing better throughout with more balanced, spacious compositions. As it also turns out, this is the standard director-approved version running just under 82 minutes versus the 84-minute one seen on the Code Red. That latter version is also included here in SD in a 1.33:1 presentation that features more info on the top and bottom than the earlier DVD but less on the sides; the difference here is an extra bit just after the main titles with Burns trying to hustle an acquaintance into coming along for the day and, when failing, getting a bit of cash supposedly for the kid. Audio is LPCM mono either way (sounding fine) with optional English SDH subtitles. In "A Country Girl" (6m3s), Lewis looks back at her early days rooming with Jacqueline Bisset in her modeling days, their very different roles in 1967's Casino Royale, her initial meeting speaking French with Polanski via Bisset, and her roles in this film (from which at least one dramatic scene with her that would have been the original ending was cut) and Fearless Vampire Killers. The 2015 documentary Dancing Before the Enemy: How a Teenage Boy Fooled the Nazis and Lived (63m57s) is a fascinating snapshot of producer Gene Gutowski directed by his son, Adam Bardach, in which they visit Poland and cover his dad's career as a Jewish adolescent during World War II which informed his name change and work in films including this project, Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, and The Pianist. In "The Word of an Alcoholic" (14m59s), Michael Brooke surveys the depiction of "drinking problems" here as a likely influence of successful writer Marek Hłasko (The Noose) whose path crossed early on with Polanski including filmmaking, brawling, and a contentious Youth Festival before his untimely demise. Finally 1993's BBC spotlight "Behind the Camera" (12m56s) focuses on Taylor's work including an interview with Polanski about their work on Repulsion along with participation from Taylor himself and Anthony Minghella covering his technique including work for Stanley Kubrick. Also included is a limited edition booklet featuring an essay by Michał Oleszczyk ("A Day at the Beach and the Poet-Drunk" about the transition from novel to script to screen, as well as its place in the lineage of tormented literary alcoholics), a compilation of trade journal reports on the production and the effect of the Manson murders, print interviews with Hesera at the time of the film’s 1993 re-release focusing on Sellers and Polanski, and a handful of critical reactions from the first Cannes screening and the 1994 revival.

Indicator (Blu-ray)

Indicator (Blu-ray) (Alternate Cut)

Code Red (DVD)

Updated review on July 15, 2025