Une si jolie petite plage

1949, France, directed by Yves Allégret

I've little to add to David Cairns' excellent overview, which was prompted me to seek the picture out in the first place. It's another fine entry in the cycle of desperately downbeat films produced in post-war France, films that are impossible to read as anything other than part of the struggle to come to terms with the country's recent past. The conclusion here is especially bitter, though perhaps it's only from the depths of the abyss that renewal can come.