'On the Beach' has a great premise to work with - a town ignoring the impending radioactive doom creeping and strolling slowly with the winds of the ocean towards it, and a navy team with a submarine that does not want to suspend the cloak of importance of their duties. The scenes of tranquil and playfulness are especially well-made and has the bittersweet comfort of ignorance in helplessness. The exploration of the vacant landscapes of American shores and harbours is unnerving. I did enjoy the reactions of most of the people to their eventual demise. What really disturbs the story is the ill-paced romance aspects. If they had spent more time with people coping (or not coping) in these strange circumstances instead of the romance plots, this could have been a classic. It was evident that the movie was not about the nuclear catastrophe itself, but how the Australian town reacts to it. But it takes a while to pick up. The party scene at the beginning of the film, for example, is extremely boring and not essential.

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. Premiered, among others, in Moscow 58 years ago this month. Peck, a life long supporter of nuclear disarmament, attended.

On The Beach is directed by Stanley Kramer, has a screenplay by John Paxton, is based on the novel by Nevil Shute and stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson.On The Beach is set in 1964 where following a Nuclear war the majority of the worlds population has been killed, apart from some people who were at sea at the time and the population of Australia. The deadly radiation is making it's way towards Australia and the citizens and any survivors from other countries who've made their way there must come to terms with their impending doom.The US submarine USS Sawfish commanded by Captain Dwight Towers(Gregory Peck)arrives in Australia where Towers and his crew await the end of the world. Towers befriends Australian Navy Lieutenant Peter Holmes(Anthony Perkins)who's young wife Mary(Donna Anderson)is struggling to accept that they and their new born daughter will soon lose their lives.Towers also meets Moira Davidson(Ava Gardner) a weary woman who uses alcohol as a way to cope with what humanity is facing. Towers and Moira fall in love and for a while bring some comfort to each other. Towers is a widower who's family were killed in the Nuclear war although he still holds onto a small hope that somehow they may have survived. Towers also meets Julian Osborne(Fred Astaire)a scientist who helped create the atom bomb and bitterly regrets that invention and the military who used these weapons.As they seek to come to terms with their situation a radio transmission is received from America which could indicate survivors there. Towers, Osborne and the Sawfish crew go to investigate.Bleak and chilling On The Beach makes us question the sense of having so many Nuclear and biological weapons when just having one is one too many. Both the film and the novel make you think how you would react to the world ending, would you pretend it wasn't going to happen? would you get sick or would you commit suicide to prevent a horrible death? The films characters all have to face these questions and Mary and Peter Holmes in particular struggle to decide when faced with suicide or agonising radiation sickness. It's an horrific choice none of us should ever have to face. Being released so close to the Cold War this film no doubt struck a powerful chord with audiences who thought they might well be facing the worlds end soon themselves.Chilling,thought provoking and deeply moving with brilliant performances On The Beach is an unforgettable experience. The films use of the tune Waltzing Matilda is haunting and it works really well with the film especially during the final few minutes.

My buddy did not want to watch with me my DVD of the 1959 film On the Beach, because it is a depressing end of the world drama, as absolutely no one survives a third world war, yes, humanity is extinguished.Yet in essence, upon death, the world ends for many people every day. Before you pass on you may provide for remaining friends or family, and you feel consoled by anticipating their remembrance of you. Except you simultaneously realize that eventually they will all die too, and memories will fade among their descendants.Look at world history - countless civilizations have been eliminated although monuments and numerous artifacts are extant. The movie merely speeds up this process because all remaining life soon perishes, so no one is left to take notice of these losses.Succeeding motion pictures have depicted world wide cataclysms where select individuals endure. On the Beach distinguishes itself by sparing us violent death scenes, while recognizing our mutual fate is to finally give up the ghost. Rather than loot or savage others, most people faced their own demise privately by reflecting on the meaning of one's life. This is not defeatist: when dying from an incurable disease such as radioactive poisoning, you must prepare for departure.I found myself contemplating how lead actors Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner have in real life died, so fiction became fact since their personal world actually did expire. This is the root of the sorrow I felt, and why On the Beach is paradoxically an authentic characterization, despite we the living temporarily overcoming its premise of annihilation. Sorrow is also a cause for belief in a Supreme Being who we desperately wish to save us. In the film, worshipers and non-worshipers alike fall, paralleling what occurs in reality. But if you maintain faith in an afterlife, take comfort as your being on earth concludes.On the Beach provides an invaluable commentary on our tenuous existence in this sometimes wonderful but always deadly world that sooner or later will end for all of us.