On the Beach

Plot synopsis:
The year is 1964. The nuclear war that was waged in the northern hemisphere has ended. An American nuclear submarine, The Sawfish, at sea in the mid-Pacific makes its way down the coast of Australia where there appear to be survivors. Docking at the port of Melbourne, the crew, commanded by Lt. Commander Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) live out their lives waiting for the radioactive winds from the North to slowly make their way towards them, ending all life as we know it.The Australian Government and scientific community, hopeful that life might go on in the Southern Hemisphere or in Antarctica, ask Towers and his crew to take the sub north again to check on radiation levels and a mysterious Morse code signal emanating from near San Diego, CA. Towers is assigned an Australian Ensign (Anthony Perkins) who will act as liaison officer for the mission. Feeling sorry for Towers and the loss he has experienced up North, Perkins and his wife Mary (Donna Anderson), throw a party. They bring in a friend Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) to distract Towers so he won't become morbid and depressed. Towers slowly begins to fall in love with Moira. However, he still has the mission to think of and is still very much devoted to his wife and kids, who resided in Connecticut. He has difficulty reconciling their loss and at one point confuses Moira for his late wife, Sharon. Moira offers to become "Sharon" if it will help him deal with it and also serve the purpose of assuaging her loneliness and fear of the future, impending doom awaiting. Towers refuses. He leaves on the mission north without telling Moira. She finds out from her cousin Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire in his first dramatic role,) who will be serving as a scientist checking on the radiation levels during the mission. The Sawfish first arrives at Point Barrow in the Artic Sea, only to find that the radiation levels have not subsided. Next they visit an untouched but ghostly quiet, San Francisco. One of the crew, yeoman Swain, whose hometown is San Francisco, escapes the sub through an escape hatch and swims ashore. The Sub sits on the bottom of San Francisco bay and then the next morning surfaces to find Swain fishing from a small boat. Swain tells Captain Towers he is sorry that he deserted but he would "rather be here [sic. San Francisco] to have it" then in Australia later on. Towers understands. The Sawfish heads south to the San Diego area and puts a Radio Officer, Lt. Sunderstrom ashore in a full radiological suit with oxygen tank. Sunderstrom discovers that the mysterious morse code signal is coming from a silent radio room at a refinery, where the window pane had broken and a window shade pull cord had wrapped around a partially empty Coca-cola bottle and a morse code key thus generating the gibberish Morse code signals. Sunderstrom signals the sub as to what he has found and then shuts down the main generators at the refinery. Resigned to their fate, the Sawfish returns and Towers meets up with Moira at her father's farm. They spend time together and go to the last Australian Grand Prix, where Osborne is racing. Osborne wins which has been his dream and Towers and Moira head off to go fishing, as the fishing season has opened early. The fishing grounds are crowded with people and they spend a stormy evening together having dinner in their room in an inn. In the background one can the hear the very audible singing of drunken locals singing the tune "Waltzing Matilda" in the barroom below. Returning from the fishing trip, Towers learns that one of his crew, Seaman Ackerman, has developed radiation poisoning. The radioactive-laden winds have finally arrived and he now must consider what he is going to do about his crew and about Moira. With little time left, Towers says goodbye to Osborne and speaks to his crew. They have already taken a vote and they tell him that they would like "to head for home." He realizes his responsibility and duty is to his crew. He phones Moira who has been helping Peter deal with Mary who can't accept the reality of their present situation. Upon learning that Towers is leaving, she speeds off in her car to the Naval Base. Mary comes around and realizes that she and Peter must face their end and that their infant daughter "Jennifer" will never have the chance to experience the love and happiness that she has had. She tells Peter that she has had a good life with him and that she will "have that cup of tea now." The tea is laced with a coma-inducing sedative, provided free to the residents of Melbourne by the government to help them deal painlessly and quickly with the end. Moira finds Towers at the dock and embraces him. He tells her he loves her but has to go with his crew. She realizes that their relationship is now over but is thankful for what they had. She speeds her car along the coast so that she can catch sight of Towers as he takes the Sawfish down for one last time. Standing on a cliff she gazes off into the distance as the submarine submerges. The final scenes are of an empty and desolate Melbourne with a banner from a religious gathering at the city's center. The banner prophetically reads "There is still time...brother." The final shot is a closeup of the banner. The movie ends.

Tags: anti war

Review:
In retrospect, it may be that Julian was wrong: it may have indeed been the very presence of these terrible weapons that prevented a third world war.In any case, that aspect of the story never overshadows the movie's underlying theme, which is, rather, how each of us views the sum of our lives as our mortal end approaches.
A fine bit as well by John Tate as the old admiral("to a blind, blind world").A mere cold-war nuclear destruction movie would leave one merely frightened at the end.
The fact that this movie leaves you with an almost unbearable feeling of terrible sadness is a testament to the human power of Nevil Shute's book, as well as to the fine script and Kramer's superb direction.One of the most depressing movies ever made, but a truly great one..
"On The Beach", despite it's heavy subject of a nuclear holocaust wiping out all human life, succeeds because Stanley Kramer is mercifully more restrained and less pretentious than he would later be in "Inherit The Wind" and "Judgment At Nuremberg", which are memorable more for their polemics than their characters, in my opinion.
Except for one minor speech by Fred Astaire at one point (which as the previous reviewer noted is somewhat ironic in light of the fact that the very thing Astaire rails against, the idea that large nuclear stockpiles could keep the peace, turned out to be absolutely true) the film is for the most part about people and how they react to the knowledge that their world and their lives will soon come to an end.
But the real strength of the movie is Ava Gardner's touching performance as the lonely, alcoholic Moira Davidson who manages for one brief moment before the end to find true love with Peck.
As to the others, it was clear that good brains do not make good actors (though all were nice people, particularly Fred Astaire who could have made millions as a salesman if he had not made them as a dancer/actor).I have seen lots of times and think the best movie ever made (even better than "No Time for Sergeants", which I have seen even more times).Would like to hear from Jack Boyer (the submarine medical corpsman) if he happens to read this..
The French title is "le dernier rivage"(the last shore)The intellectuals dismiss this movie in France and I've always thought they were wrong.Ava Gardner had never been better with the eventual exception of Huston's "night of the iguana".My favorite part is the central one:one of the soldiers tries to find the cause for the strange Morse signals.He crosses bleak dead San Francisco harbor (the camera takes prodigious high angle shots of him,making us share his loneliness and his hope against hope)Hope that was to be short-lived!What a symbol,this equivalent of a bottle thrown into the sea!So few special effects,ans so much emotion.Stanley Kramer's peak..
In an age where sci-fi films seem to rely more on big budget special effects,and spectacular explosions,to hold an audience(usually at the expense of a decent script and plot line),On the beach is here to remind us of how it should be done.Although the plot is simple and uncomplicated, it works well on different levels,almost feeding of the paranoia that abounded at the time, concerning atomic weapons.It tells the story of a group of individuals,and their last few months of life.An atomic war has wiped out most of the earth,only Australia and parts of the southern hemisphere are left,but it is only a temporary reprieve,the cloud of dust which has destroyed mankind is heading their way.It is against this backdrop that the film opens,and we get to meet the main characters.Dwight Towers,the american submarine captain,played superbly by Gregory Peck,good time girl Moira Davidson  (Ava Gardner),desperately looking for one last chance of love,young naval officer and new dad Peter Holmes played by a young Anthony Perkins,and Fred Astaire as the towns drunken scientist,proving he could act as well as dance.As these characters develop,and we start to care about them,(they are all believable and for the most part,likeable),the film starts to ask questions of the viewer.what would i do?
what about my family?how would i cope?.Director Stanley Kramer plays on the very real fears of the viewer,much the same way as Byron Haskin did in War of the worlds and Robert Wise in The day the earth stood still,albeit in a more subtle fashion.It is in the second half of the film,when the grim reality sets in,that Kramer cranks up the tension,almost scene by scene,we witness the growing despair and anguish of these poor souls,and there are some pretty unsettling scenes,non more so than when we watch people queueing up for "suicide"pills and then again when Anthony Perkins tries to explain to his young wife how to administer them to their young daughter in his absence"when the time comes".
But of course,even amidst the doom and gloom,love blossoms,and the most poignant scene in the film for me,is when Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner kiss for the first time.A first rate cast and script,together with a haunting soundtrack,(you'll be whistling waltzing matilda for days after watching this)makes this one of my favourite films.Don't just rent this classic,buy it and give it pride of place in your collection..
(There are Spoilers) Emotionally packed drama about a futuristic, for the time the movie was released in 1959, nuclear war that took place in the late fall and early winter of 1963/64.
Julian had developed a deep guilt feelings about his involvement with and testing the hydrogen bomb that he's become a suicidal mental case in both his, like Moria, drinking and driving.There's also in the film the story about a young Australian couple Navy Lt. Peter Holmes and his wife Mary, Anthony Perkins & Donna Anderson, who had everything to live for.Now with the end coming they have to choose in not only taking their lives, with cyanide pills, but their infant daughter Jenny's as well.
That's in order to avoid suffering the inevitable and horrific death resulting from deadly radiation poisoning.For the most part "On the Beach" plays like an afternoon soap opera but the fact that you, and those in the movie, know that no one in it will survive the final credits makes it a lot more personal as well as heart wrenching and involving.
Towers after saying a tearful good-by to Moira goes together with his men on the USS Sawfish out to sea and back home to the USA to die together with their already deceased families and loved ones as the movie sadly come to an end to the music of "Waltzing Matilda".Powerful and thought-provoking movie about a nuclear holocaust without a single person being killed, as a result of it, in the film.
With many people, on both sides of the battle-line, who never had to live through in the 1950's and 1960's the fears and nightmares of a nuclear Armageddon are now sadly reminded that it's a war that, like in the movie, nobody will win much less survive..
Still people like Gregory Peck can't get it into their heads that everything they knew and loved is gone.Still though he finds time for a romantic interlude with Ava Gardner as the Australians and those who made it to their shore size up the situation and it ain't good and no options for hope.Nevil Shute's apocalyptic novel was filmed in Australia and it leaves a good ring of authenticity.
Anthony Perkins gives an earnest portrayal of the young officer in the Royal Australian Navy though he does slip in and out of the Aussie accent.Besides the message of On the Beach the main publicity about the film concerned Fred Astaire in his first straight dramatic part.
Towers and his crew invite the drunkard scientist Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire) to join them in their reconnaissance voyage to the further North and to the United States, and they return hopeless and aware that Australia and the rest of the mankind has very few days until the doomsday."On the Beach" is a powerful anti-war film released in the Cold War period.
The center piece to this movie that still indelibly sticks with me is when Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck meet for their last and final farewell at the dock before the SawFish crew departs back for the U.S. where they decided to spend the remaining days of their lives .
Ava Gardner and Fred Astair show what terrific actors they really are, and Anthony Perkins, as a young sailor, makes you wish he had been in many more movies.
In denial, too, is Gregory Peck as an American captain about to command an atomic submarine north in search of life--he flirts with blowzy, tippling Ava Gardner but can't stop talking about his wife and kids back home (just like all married men, we're to assume).
This wonderful movie, though dated by the use of archaic terminology like "atomic war", succeeds because it captures the atmosphere of the atom bomb-fearing fifties.Filmed in black and white instead of color (a wise choice, since B/W allows for a more expressive, timeless look), this movie follows the crew of the USS Sawfish, a United States Navy submarine who managed to avoid being destroyed in the Big War.
Together, the men and women of Melbourne and the the crew of the Sawfish wait for the end as a cloud of fallout drifts toward Australia.Anthony Perkins gives a fantastic performer as a young Aussie naval office who fears for the future of his family.
Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson star, with music by Ernest Gold and cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno.After a global nuclear war, the inhabitants of Australia realise that the radiation clouds are heading their way.
For Melbournians there is also the added nostalgia of seeing the defunct asbestos blue trains running on the Williamstown line and the old W Class trams along Swanston Street.I suppose everyone has heard Ava Gardner's comment that Melbourne was the perfect place to shoot a film about the end of the world.
Stanley Kramer directed this nuclear holocaust drama set in the near-future and stars Gregory Peck as Lt. Commander Towers of the American submarine U.S.S. Sawfish, which has escaped the nuclear war that has devastated most of the world, and ends up in the last safe place: Australia, where Towers meets Moira Davidson(played by Ava Gardner) with whom he begins a relationship.
hello my family and I went for a quick Holiday to Phillip Island it is ,(about 100 km from Melbourne ), We stayed at hotel which they filmed the movie " on the bench " back then the hotel was called "The Sunseeker Motel " Built in 1959 as the first motel on the Island, The Sunseeker Motel (as it was known), was completed just in time for Ava Gardner, Fred Astair, Gregory Peck and Anthony Perkins, who stayed here during filming of the Hollywood classic 'On The Beach!' for more information goto (http://www.islandhotel.com.au) .......................................................................................................
The amazing ensemble cast, starring the wonderful Gregory Peck in one the best roles of his life, to a memorable and stunning Ava Gardner in the sunset of her career in a role she was born to play, and the dark horse in this remarkable drama, Fred Astaire, in a nuanced performance that should have won him the Oscar.
Just how good an actor Fred Astaire really was...In this adaptation of Nevil Shute's novel, Astaire throws off the dancing shoes, says "so long" to Ginger Rogers and plays a bewildered, aging scientist using the last days of mankind to live out his boyhood fantasies of life as a race car driver, while ruminating on the self-destructive tendency of our species that has finally driven us to extinction.
He is ably supported by Ava Gardner as a lonely alcoholic desperate to find love in what time she has left and Anthony Perkins as a committed family man, who must face up to the possibility that he will have to poison his own wife and baby in order to be a 'good father.'As you can probably guess then, On the Beach is not a cheerful film.
"On the Beach" (1959): Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, directed by Stanley Kramer.
The new version has a U.S. Naval commander pleasing the emotions by deserting his ship and crew on it's final cruise, to stay with the lovely ingénue, who looked strikingly like Ava Gardner, and perhaps gave the best performance of the movie.
You can only view the film in this context.Admittedly, at times the pace drags and some elements are overwrought, even maudlin:  the Salvation Army band, over-reliance on "Waltzing Matilda" (to remind us that we're in Australia?)--but if you can overlook these excesses, other facets are dead-on.To see San Francisco utterly deserted (along with the startling music which accompanies this sequence); the search for the source of the phantom radio transmission, and the puzzle of "waters" and "connect"; the magnificent Ava Gardner in her last luscious full bloom; subtle touches including the exploring crewman's shutdown of the generators in the power station which no longer serves any customers; the lone sailor's decision to jump ship in San Francisco; Gregory Peck's final skyward glance as his submarine leaves Australia--this film is at its very best when not telegraphing its message, but simply allowing us to see the last flickers of hope as the characters face their demise..
Still this one remains perhaps the most effective "end of the world as we know it" american films, cool-headed in frozen cold war times, with an unusually light touch by the Oliver Stone (but a tad more significant in my books) of those days.
Not in the least pedantic, never dull (though a bit stretching at 134 minutes), at times almost elegiac and decidedly pessimistic, Kramer's On the Beach boasts a typically strong cast, crowned by a fantastic playing off each other of Peck and Gardner, with the latter being nothing sort of magnificent in her vulnerable first hour in the film.
On the 'plus' side, a viewer is left with powerful images (in THE DEFIANT ONES, Sidney Poitier, his hand grasping Tony Curtis', at the film's climax, is as potent a statement about racial equality in a world of bigotry as has ever been made on film); on the 'negative' side, characters are often underdeveloped, serving more to illustrate Kramer's point of view than 'real' people.ON THE BEACH, Kramer's 1959 anti-nuke 'Message' picture, re-enforces his best and worst qualities as a director.
Full of startling, provocative imagery (the banner, 'THERE IS STILL TIME, BROTHER', the film's final image, is a chilling testament, and so effective that it would reappear in the 2000 TV-movie remake), the story is far less effective when telling the 'human' side of the tragedy, relying on Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire's long-established screen 'personas' to make up for a lack of characterization.
Only Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson, as a young Australian couple with a baby, facing the heartbreaking decision of either killing themselves and their child or dying by radiation poisoning, come across as believable.Ultimately, the film comes down to a series of 'set' pieces, scenes which work better individually than in the whole fabric of a nuclear war statement.
The cast is interesting and dependable (accents aside), Gregory Peck turning in a fine performance as the sub skipper initially unable to accept love because of the belief his wife is still alive, and Anthony Perkins as the young Australian coming to terms with the inevitability of the situation.Be warned, it is at times very melodramatic.
(Why this happened is apparently explained in the book, though it's never clearly explained in the movie.) A lone nuclear-powered US sub shows up in Australia, the only place on earth where people are still alive.
A far superior film dealing with the subject of nuclear war from the same time period is "Fail-Safe", a movie that seems fresh, vital and exciting even today.
Would have liked to have seen more of the dissolving of order that Shute depicted towards the end and of course Kramer copped out a bit with the last scene of Moira on the headland as the sub sailed off (perhaps Ava taking suicide pills would not have been a good look in those days).My only real disappointment was the score.
Nevil Shute's dark and gloomy novel about Australians (and not a few American refugees) awaiting the end of the world in the form of fallout from a nuclear holocaust in the Northern Hemisphere certainly seems an odd choice for a Hollywood film.Kramer's film makes a few changes from the novel: Fred Astaire's character is a much younger man in the book, and his name has been changed for some reason from John to Julian.
A good thing, too, because in the one scene where Peck tries to work up emotion about his dead family, the results are almost embarrassing; it is simply beyond him.There is fine work here, too, by Astaire as a former flame of Gardner's, a scientist who joins the submarine crew for an investigative cruise that takes up a good portion of the center of the film, and Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson as a young married couple with a new baby facing the fact that all their hopes and dreams are about to come to an end.My only other quibble is that the American actors playing Australians (Gardner, Astaire, and Perkins) have varying degrees of success with the accent.
Gregory Peck part as a Navy submarine captain seems to fit him like a glove, although his particular story interested me far less than Mr. Perkins.What makes "On the Beach" so relevant to modern times, and perhaps all time, is the banner that the religious zealots in Australia put up towards the end of the film.
I know this movie comes highly recommended, but I just found it too unbelievable to fully enjoy it.Nuclear fallout doesn't act at all as depicted in this film.