Moving from London to the south coast, I decided the tempo of Eastbourne agreed with my intended andante lifestyle of retirement, but persuaded to work part-time for an estate agency after socialising with the owner.
Following a valuation I befriended the elderly lady considering selling her property and moving to a residential care home. Although ninety years of age she was still active, although had recently given up driving, both on the roads and on the golf course. She was compos mentis – reading The Times every day – managed her finances, shopped for and cooked her own meals. I liked her and encouraged her not to sell, to retain independence as long as possible. The sale of her flat would provide about five years in a care home, long enough you may think except her family tree propagated branches of exceptional longevity.
‘What will you do when the money runs out?’
‘Jump into a taxi to Beachy Head,’ she replied. ‘You wouldn’t even have to pay the driver, just ask him to wait.’
Unfortunately, following the building of the iconic lighthouse in 1902, the cliffs of Beachy Head acquired a perverse cachet of romance for despondent souls as a portal to the next life. A few years ago, with their numbers averaging twenty or more per year, a chaplaincy of volunteer Christians was established to patrol the cliffs, their duty to intercept and talk-out the dispirited leapers.
However, a less well known aspect to the cliffs exists, luring film directors to play on the dramatic scenery or mimic homage to its infamous reputation.
In the opening sequence to James Bond’s The Living Daylights (1987), the cliffs deputized for Gibraltar with 007 driving his Land Rover over the edge, only to parachute to safety. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), also written by Bond creator Ian Fleming, shows the magical car driving off the cliff top only to take flight like a ‘Q’ invention.
Mentioning ‘Q’ reminds me of Quadrophenia (1979), in which a disillusioned 1960s mod propels his nemesis’ motor scooter over the edge to destruction. The British ‘B’ movie Smokescreen (1964) opens with a blazing car hurtling over the edge in a tale of insurance fraud and murder.
Hopscotch (1980) is one of my favourite comedy thrillers, starring the wonderful duo of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. The denouement features a staged mid-air explosion over the cliffs showering the sea around the lighthouse with aircraft debris.
However, in all these films the cliffs and lighthouse produced a dramatic backdrop but there were no deaths to live up to its reputation. In The Living Daylights, Smokescreen and Hopscotch the “deaths” were faked; a cinematic death at Beachy Head has never been committed to film.
Not true, I hear you film buffs protest. In Monty Python’s irreverent The Meaning of Life (1983) a man, Arthur Jarrett, is sentenced to death by a manner of his own choosing. He is chased by twelve beautiful, topless young women to the cliff edge and plummets into his waiting grave – and funeral service – on the beach far below. But this was filmed at the white cliffs of Dover, not Beachy Head.
Words and Artwork by John Silverton © John Silverton
