The Primal Screen:

The major after-the-bomb movie of the fifties came in 1959 - On The Beach. Based on the bestselling novel by Nevil Shute, it was a serious attempt by producer/director Stanley Kramer (the David Puttnam of his day) to treat the subject of nuclear war in a realistic and unsensational manner. He doesn't completely succeed. Like all of his films it is marred by ponderousness and an over-developed sense of its own worth, but it does create a convincing picture of a dying world and a mood of utter hopelessness.

Perhaps it's because I'm (John Brosnan) an Australian that I find the movie so affecting. I remember that when I read the novel in my early teens (I didn't see the movie until much later) it gave me nightmares. It wasn't so much the prospect of nuclear war that upset me as the thought of Australia being the only country left in the world. And being Australian also makes it impossible for me to sit through the picnic sequence when everyone sings Waltzing Matiltda, first cheerfully and finally as a funeral dirge. When the movie shows on TV I get so embarrassed at that point that I have to leave the room.

The scenes showing the people of Melbourne queueing for death pills still have impact though when one of the film's stars, Ava Gardner, said at the time that 'Melbourne is the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world,' the people of Melbourne were not ammused. Also impressive are the sequences involving the American sub, commanded by Gregory Peck, making a futile journey to California to look for survivors - a window shade blowing against a morse code transmitter is found to be the source of radio signals that prompt the expedition - as well as the film's final shots of the sub heading out to sea to scuttle itself.

MS Cinemania 1994

Pauline Kael Review: Linus Pauling was quoted as saying, 'It may be that some years from now we can look back and say that On the Beach is the movie that saved the world.' The greatest ability of the director, Stanley Kramer, may have been for eliciting fatuous endorsements from eminent people. This cautionary tale brings together a group of stars and puts them on the littoral of Australia, to await the lethal hydrogen-bomb cloud that has wiped out the rest of the world's population. Gregory Peck plays the commander of an American submarine with his customary relentless dignity, even when he's cuddling up with Ava Gardner, a lovable wildflower "who has lived too hard and drunk too much." Anthony Perkins, one of the submarine officers, gangles, and wrestles, wet-eyed, with the problem of whether to give suicide pills to his wife (Donna Anderson) and child; Fred Astaire is a civilian scientist who explains the disaster by saying that somebody has pulled a boner. Somebody has; his initials are S.K. Adapted from the Nevil Shute novel by John Paxton; cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno and Daniel Fapp; music by Ernest Gold. United Artists.

Tom Byers, Springfield, MO

Just saw the movie on one of the cable TV channels. As a ham radio operator I was fascinated by the fact the the "Morse" code sequence with Fred Astaire was accurate down to the correct use of the code. The message ends with ...will return now, AR (end of message) SK (station closing) and then of course he shuts down the power plant.....of course why the soda pop in the coke bottle did not evaporate in the intervening time is left to the viewers imagination. Oh well, I think is it called artistic license.