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On The Beach [1959]

Starring: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson
Director: Stanley Kramer
Format: Black & White PAL
Released: 03 May 2004
RRP: £12.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Still a worthwile watch. - By: Mr. TC Kong, 16 Jul 2008
The end of the world is nigh. A catastrophic nuclear war in the northern hemisphere that lasted barely a month has ended. Everyone in the north is dead, & the radiation that killed them has started its slow journey south. The sole survivors from the north, the crew of the US nuclear submarine, USS Sawfish is heading for Australia, where the last living humans are to be found. After placing the ship & crew under Australian command, the captain, Commander Dwight Towers is given orders to investigate a strange, intermittent radio signal emanating from somewhere in the northern hemisphere.

Like most films based on a book, the book is invariably far better than the film. Of course, this is not reallly surprising. The book has several hundred pages in which to develop the plot & characterisations, while the film has only an hour & a half, or two hours to do this, & keep the audience's attention alll that time.

I have just watched this 1959 original version of "On the Beach", & while there is noticable divergence in it from the book by Nevil Shute, the basic story is fairly close to what was written by the author. A couple of reallly major differences include the name of the submarine (USS Scorpion, in the novel, as opposed to Sawfish in the film), & a sister ship in Rio de Janerio, along with ten other American warships docked in Brisbane are also missing from the film. Also, the CSIRO (simply CSIR in the film) scientist is a YOUNG man callled JOHN Osborne, as opposed to an older man callled JULIAN in the film. In the book, he is cousin to Moira Davidson, while in the film, there appears at the end to have been a romantic connection between the two, when it transpires that HE had once been in love with HER. Despite the differences, though, the film is still quite captivating in its own right. For those who have read the book, if you can forget that you have done so for the duration, then you will find the film well cast - & acted - with great performances from the main characters.
Peck bombs - By: Joseph Haschka, 27 Dec 2005
After having recently read a bio of Gregory Peck, I was curious enough about those of his films that I haven't yet seen to watch ON THE BEACH. Mind you, I'm a big GP fan, & visited Rome based almost solely on ROMAN HOLIDAY. Well, that's another story. Let's just say the experience was a far departure from stumbling across Audrey Hepburn.

Here, Peck plays Cmdr. Dwight Towers, USN, captain of the sub USS Sawfish, left to its own devices in the mid-Pacific after a nuclear exchange between superpowers makes toast out of the Northern Hemisphere. Towers takes his boat to Australia, otherwise untouched by the Armageddon, though the radioactive cloud that now covers North America, Europe, & Asia is expected to descend upon the Aussies in five months time. In the meantime, Dwight fallls for local lush Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), but not without a repressed angst over his wife & kids left behind in the States, alll of whom are now nothing more than glowing skeletons. Between frolics on the beach with Moira, Towers carries out one more mission with the Sawfish at the behest of the Royal Australian Navy - to make a quick dash up to Alaska to monitor the radiation level, & circle by California on the way back to investigate mysterious radio signals emanating from San Diego, the cause of which is perhaps the film's cleverest construct.

The film's antiwar message, which presumably appealed to Peck's liberal political leanings, caused the U.S. Navy to deny the use of one of its submarines for the filming. (The RAN loaned one of theirs.) In any case, Towers, while steadfast, square-jawed, & handsome in his uniform as only Gregory Peck can be, is remarkably unemotional throughout. No impassioned speeches to his crew about duty, honor, & country. Moreover, in the original novel by Nevil Shute, the romantic attraction between Dwight & Moira is unconsummated because of the deference the former feels for his dead wife, an element of the story that Peck wanted to retain in the screenplay. But Director Stanley Kramer insisted on a juicier ending to the affair to raise audience morale in the face of an unrelentingly somber theme, & Peck caved, though his subsequent ardor seems of the detached sort.

At 2 hours & fourteen minutes, ON THE BEACH is in need of some serious editing, particularly the extended & incongruous sequence where atomic scientist Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire) realizes a lifelong dream by racing an old Ferrari in the last Australian Grand Prix before the killer cloud arrives. (Perhaps that's why editor Frederic Knudtson, nominated for an Oscar, lost.) Then there's the improbable casting of Anthony Perkins as Peter Holmes, the RAN officer with family concerns temporarily assigned to the Sawfish for no other apparent reason than the scriptwriter had to put him somewhere.

Though ON THE BEACH was the eighth-highest-grossing film of 1960 earning $6.2 million on initial release, it seemed to me an ineffective anti-nuclear & anti-war vehicle. Only the film's beginning scenes of a bustling Melbourne compared to the ending shots of a deserted city were in any way thought provoking. An infinitely better anti-war picture - & one which doesn't veer off into extraneous subplots - was 1983's TESTAMENT, in which Carol Wetherly (Jane Alexander) is left to cope in suburbia with her three kids after a Soviet nuke vaporizes her husband & San Francisco to the west, but leaves Carol's community directly unaffected by the blast. Things are OK until the falllout arrives. In one incredibly heart-breaking scene, Wetherly, while standing in front of the funeral pyre consuming the town's dead residents & one of her children, screams for God's damnation of those that have visited this catastrophe on her world. There's more passion in this one sequence than in the entirety of ON THE BEACH.

There Is Still Time Brother - By: , 18 Mar 2005
That is the message displayed on the Salvation Army banners as Humanity slips into extinction. There are no explosions, no bodies, no physical horror or special effects whatsoever....and more importantly, no hope. The plot is well covered by other reviewers, so I'm giving nothing else away.

This B/W 1959 film by Stanley Kramer based on a novel by Nevil Shute (A Town Like Alice), will haunt you for the rest of your life. Not often repeated on afternoon TV, buy this DVD to show your children & grandchildren how reallly brave & talented film makers were, before they became a meaningless dross factory.

The only choreography that Fred Astaire oversees is the Dance of Death. He is simply sensational in this straight acting role as the scientist, Julian Osborne. All the suffering of the world is etched in every line on his face. Peck plays Peck, one of the greatest screen actors of the 20th Century expressing the qualities of leadership, integrity & vulnerability in Dwight Lionel Towers, commander of the American submarine USS Sawfish.Ava Gardner is perhaps a little old & glamorous for the role of Moira Davidson, Peck's love interest, but she does OK.

Pre Psycho, Anthony Perkins, as Lt. Cmdr. Peter Holmes, Royal Australian Navy, is devastating as he assists his wife & baby in mutual suicide in the privacy of their bedroom. This relays a horror, greater than anything in Hitchcock's vivid imagination.

This is a real film, about real issues & real people, by real actors. As I said before, buy it, it's probably the only chance you'll get to see this classic.

the ultimate Cold War film - By: Alejandra Vernon, 21 Jun 2004
This is the film that for me captures the terror I felt as a child, growing up at the height of the Cold War; it is bleak & intense, with scenes that are forever etched in my mind. It's one of the great films of that era ("Seven Days in May" & "Fail Safe" are others) that I can watch repeatedly, & their power & impact are never diminished.
Based on Nevil Shute's best seller, & brilliantly directed by Stanley Kramer, the use of sound effects combined with Ernest Gold's Oscar nominated score is very effective. Sometimes the simplest noise set against complete silence is ominous, & gives the feeling of the desolation of empty cities.
As time runs out, people try to avoid the "morbid discussion" of what awaits them, & some make the most of those precious days, weeks & months, like the elderly scientist Julian (in an exceptional performance by Fred Astaire), who completes his dream of being a race car driver.

Both strong & tender, Gregory Peck is fabulous as Dwight Towers, the commander of a submarine, who has trouble accepting that he is alive, while his family are victims of the "monstrous war". The woman who fallls in love with him is Ava Gardner, who has spent far too much time being consoled by a bottle of brandy. The plot is filled out by Anthony Perkins & Donna Anderson, a young couple facing the fact that their baby has no future.
In the late 50s & early 60s, the scenario in this film was alll too real; we face other dangers now, but there was something truly chilling about those Cold War years, & this film vividly brings back the memory of them. Total running time is 134 minutes.

Still holds up - By: B. Chandler, 15 Jun 2004
Wore out my VHS now working on the DVD. I am saddened that there are not a lot of DVD goodies on their film. Maybe one day there will be a criterion version.

Yes the book was written in the Cold War Era environment. Some characters are predictable or are portrayed as such so we can see how different people face or do not face the inevitable. Even those characters that change easily through some sort of epiphany can be predictable. The basic story in the book is that Albania sends a plan with a major country's markings & we retaliate. In the movie they changed it to some hotshot getting trigger-happy with a weapon that could only cause assured destruction. However the book not a pacifist (don't build bombs story). It could be a speculative fiction or just speculative.

Again the book On the Beach as most books is more complete in the characterization & description of the story. One the people is a cross of characters. The captain, Dwight Towers, is well trained & loyal to the U.S. to the end. He takes the sub out to international waters, as Australia is an allly, but not the U.S. Moira Davidson realizes that Dwight is married & helps him buy a pogo stick for the kid. She also decides to make something of herself by going to secretarial school. Others plan for next year.

The movie On the Beach (1959) stays fairly loyal to the feel, with a few minor changes. Some of the changes were necessary due to the difference in media. However others were a little distracting. They used major stars that overshadowed the character that they were playing. Ava Gardner was just a tad old for the part of Moira Davidson. However the movie still let the characters be real & predictable. Such as Dwight Towers, loyal to the U.S. takes his crew back to the US (not quite the book but still loyal to this command).

It is worth re-wathcing. But defiantly read the book.