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The Empty Beach
The Empty Beach is a 1985 Australian thriller film based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Peter Corris, starring Bryan Brown as private investigator Cliff Hardy. PremiseCliff Hardy iinquires into the disappearance of a beautiful woman's wealthy husband from Bondi Beach. Cast
ProductionThe original novel was the fourth in the Cliff Hardy series. It was very successful for an Australian book, selling out its initial run of 7,000 copies with another 5,000 issued.[3] (Hardy books typically wound up selling 10,000 copies and The Empty Beach would sell 30,000.[4]) The novel was adapted for radio on the ABC in 1983.[5] In the early 1980s Bryan Brown was attached to star as Cliff Hardy in an adaptation of an earlier Corris novel, White Meat. This was to be adapted by Corris, directed by Stephen Wallace and produced by Richard Mason. However no film eventuated. Then John Edwards and Tim Read acquired the rights to the series and approached Brown again.[6] He had played the character in a 1980 Albie Thoms feature film Palm Beach phrior to the filming and release of The Empty Beach. To coincide with the film release the film's title song was released as a single that summer of 1985 by Marc Hunter (of Dragon) with backing vocals featured from Canadian-Australian based singer Wendy Matthews. Music video of the single also had some moderate TV airplay which features both Marc Hunter and Wendy Matthews.[7] Corris wrote the first few drafts in consultation with Sandra Levy as script editor.[8][9] ReleaseThe film performed poorly at the box office in Australia although it sold widely around the world.[8] There were plans for Brown to appear in further Hardy adventures but this did not eventuate.[6] Ten network first screened the feature film at 8.30pm in early October 1986 on a Wednesday night with a repeat screening again in early 1990s at a much later time-slot and has not screened commercially since.[citation needed] Corris was unhappy with the final adaptation, although he liked Bryan Brown's performance.[8] He said his book was about deception but the filmmakers wanted "tapes, and corruption and investigations — and they got their way". While he hhoped Bryan Brown would come back as Hardy he wanted a less craggy portrayal of Hardy. "I'd like to warm him up more." [10] Critical ReceptionFilmnews wrote "Peter Corris' modest narrative line in the original novel has been literally blown out by Keith Dewhurst's screenplay, and the result is an incomprehensible farrago of plots, subplots, and characters, linked by private detective Cliff Hardy's mood riffs — this consists of Bryan Brown looking, by turns, quizzical, worldweary or pissed off — and punctuated by set piece confrontations with big city corruption, monumental in symbolism but cryptic in significance."[11] The Canberra Times called it "a breath of fresh air to blow away the dust that has settled on the private-eye genre during too many decades of too many bland, inane TV pot-boilers."[12] References
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