On the Beach (1959 film)
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| On the Beach | |
|---|---|
| Image:On the Beach DVD cover.jpg On the Beach DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Stanley Kramer |
| Produced by | Stanley Kramer |
| Written by | Nevil Shute (novel) John Paxton |
| Starring | Gregory Peck Ava Gardner Fred Astaire Anthony Perkins |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | December 17, 1959 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 134 min. |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
On the Beach is a 1959 movie based on Nevil Shute's novel of the same name featuring Gregory Peck (USS Sawfish captain Dwight Lionel Towers), Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (scientist Julian – John in the novel – Osborne) and Anthony Perkins (Australian naval officer Peter Holmes). It was directed by Stanley Kramer, who won the 1960 BAFTA for best director. Ernest Gold won the 1960 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Score.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The story is set in 1964, what was then the near future (1963 in the book) in the months following World War III. The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all life. While the nuclear bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America.
From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious and incomprehensible Morse code radio signal originating from the United States. With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, the USS Sawfish, placed by its captain under Australian naval command, is ordered to sail north from its port of refuge in Melbourne (Australia's southernmost major mainland city) to try to contact whoever is sending the signal. The American captain, Dwight Towers (Peck), leads the operation, leaving behind a woman of recent acquaintance, the alcoholic Moira Davidson (Gardner), to whom he's become attached, despite his feelings of guilt regarding the certain deaths of his wife and children in the U.S. He refuses to admit that they are dead and continues to behave as though they are still alive, buying them gifts and writing them letters.
The Australian government makes arrangements to provide its citizens with free cyanide pills and injections, so that they will be able to avoid prolonged suffering from radiation sickness once it arrives. One of the film's poignant dilemmas is that of Australian naval officer Peter Holmes (Perkins), who has a baby daughter and a naive and childish wife, Mary (Donna Anderson), who is in denial about the impending disaster. Because he has been assigned to travel north with the Americans to search for signs of life, Peter must try to explain to Mary how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the cyanide should he be unable to return in time. Mary, however, reacts badly, almost violently, at the prospect of killing her daughter and herself.
After sailing to Point Barrow in the Arctic Ocean, the expedition members determine that radiation levels are intensifying. On the way back, they stop at San Francisco. The views through the periscope indicate what they have seen elsewhere; there are no signs of life, and minimal or no damage. One crewmember, who is from San Francisco, jumps ship to spend his last hours in his hometown. He is last seen in a motorboat, fishing and awaiting his death.
The Sawfish then travels to an abandoned naval installation in San Diego (in the book, it is located near Seattle), where they discover that, although the city's residents have long since perished from radiation poisoning, the Naval base's hydroelectric power is still on-line. The ship's communications officer is sent ashore in a radiation suit to investigate. The mysterious signal is the result of a Coca-cola bottle being nudged by a window shade teetering in the breeze and occasionally hitting a telegraph key. Bitterly disappointed, the submariners return to Australia to live out the little time that remains before the radioactive air arrives and kills everyone.
The characters make their best efforts to "enjoy" what time and pleasures remain to them before dying from radiation poisoning. Scientist Julian Osborne (John Osborne in the novel) and others organize a dangerous motor race that results in the violent deaths of several participants. Moira and Dwight share a brief romantic interlude on a fishing trip. When they return, Towers finds out one of his crew members has developed radiation sickness. The deadly radiation has arrived. Some citizens seek spiritual guidance from religious leaders from the Salvation Army. They hang a banner from City Hall that states, "There Is Still Time - Brother". Others line up outside hospitals to receive their cyanide pills. Later, Mary Holmes gets ill and she and Peter share a tender moment together before Mary decides that she's been "foolish and impractical" and asks her husband to "take care" of her and their daughter. Dwight wants to stay with Moira, but his remaining crew wants to head for home. In the end, Captain Towers chooses not to remain with Moira but rather to lead his crew in a desperate, futile attempt to make it back to the States.
Unlike the novel, no blame is placed on who started the war; it is hinted that it may have been an accident.
Like the novel, much of the film takes place in Melbourne, close to the southernmost part of the Australian mainland. Nevil Shute is said to have despised the film (which was released little more than a month before he died), feeling that his characters had been altered too greatly, especially the scene where Moira and Dwight consummate their relationship. However, the film shot in and around Melbourne (with some of the racing action shot at Riverside Raceway) was a great novelty for that city at the time.
It should be noted that the uniform southward drift of the nuclear fallout as portrayed in the story is scientifically implausible. Global fallout levels would have been unlikely to be so high as to be so uniformly and promptly lethal, nor would fallout be likely to drift southwards so gradually and uniformly. In the book, Shute attributes this lethality to cobalt-salted bombs, but this detail is omitted from the film. It would also be unlikely that a major strategic center such as San Francisco would not have been hit by an enemy bomb; it and the naval installation near San Diego are physically unscathed.
[edit] Differences between the novel and film
- In the novel, the submarine is named USS Scorpion. In the film, it's called the USS Sawfish.
- The novel describes Moira Davidson as a slender, petite pale blonde in her mid-twenties. In the film, she is portrayed by the tall, curvaceous, brunette 37-year old Ava Gardner.
- Seattle is the location in the novel where the strange Morse signals are detected. The film uses San Diego as its location.
- The nuclear scientist in the book is named John Osborne, a thirtysomething bachelor. In the movie, he is portrayed by 60-year old Fred Astaire, and is renamed Julian. Moira and Julian(John) are cousins in the novel, but formerly romantically linked in the film. In the book, the scientist commits suicide with cyanide; in the film, he commits suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in his race car in his garage.
- Admiral Bridie and his secretary, Lieutenant Osgood, are in the film, but not in the novel.
- Moira and Dwight never sleep together in the novel; Dwight remains faithful to the memory of his wife and Moira, though disappointed at first, comes to respect his stance. Film director Stanley Kramer believed that audiences would not believe that Dwight, as played by Peck, could resist the charms of sex symbol Gardner. So a love scene was inserted.
- The novel ends with a dying Moira sitting in her car, taking her cyanide pills, while watching Scorpion head out to sea to be scuttled. Unlike the book, no mention of scuttling the sub is made in the film; instead Captain Towers' crew requested that he try take them back to the United States, where they can die on home soil. In the film, Ava Gardner is seen merely watching Dwight's submarine disappear, and not committing suicide.
[edit] Ava Gardner's supposed Melbourne remark
It has often been claimed that Ava Gardner described Melbourne as 'the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world'. However, the purported quote was actually invented by journalist Neil Jillett, who was writing for the Sydney Morning Herald at the time. His original draft of a tongue-in-cheek piece about the making of the film said that he had not been able to confirm a third-party report that Ava Gardner had made this remark. The newspaper's sub-editor changed it to read as a direct quotation from Gardner, and it was published in that form. It entered Melbourne folklore very quickly.[1]
[edit] Trivia
| Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- According to http://www.nevilshute.org, Nevil Shute was extremely displeased with the final version of the film, feeling that too many changes had been made at the expense of the story's integrity. Gregory Peck agreed with him, but in the end, producer/director Stanley Kramer's ideas won out.
- The U.S. Department of Defense as well as the United States Navy refused to cooperate in the production of this film, not allowing access to their nuclear-powered submarine. The film production crew was forced to use a non-nuclear, diesel-electric Royal Navy submarine, HMS Andrew.
- The film premiered simultaneously in several major cities around the world, including Moscow.
- The movie was shot in part in Berwick, then a suburb outside of Melbourne, Australia and part in Frankston, also a Melbourne suburb. The well-known scene where Peck meets Gardner, who arrives from Melbourne by rail, was filmed on platform #1 of Frankston railway station, now demolished, and a subsequent scene where Peck and Gardner are transported off by horse and buggy, was filmed in Young Street, Frankston.
- Some streets which were being built at the time in Berwick were named after people involved in the film, as shown in Melway Edition #1 (1996), [1]. Some examples are: Shute Avenue (Nevil Shute) and Kramer Drive (Stanley Kramer).
- Among the uncredited bit players was Graham Kennedy.
[edit] Academy Awards
| Award | Person | |
| Nominated: | ||
| Best Score | Ernest Gold | |
| Best Editing | Frederic Knudtson | |
The film score played heavily on the motif of "Waltzing Matilda".
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Review" lift-out magazine in The Weekend Australian, 18-19 December 1999
[edit] External links
Films directed by Stanley Kramer |
|---|
Not as a Stranger • The Pride and the Passion • The Defiant Ones • On the Beach • Inherit the Wind • Judgment at Nuremberg • It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World • Ship of Fools • Guess Who's Coming to Dinner • The Secret of Santa Vittoria • R.P.M. • Bless the Beasts & Children • Oklahoma Crude • The Domino Principle • The Runner Stumbles |
fr:Le Dernier Rivage he:על החוף it:L'ultima spiaggia (film 1959) ja:渚にて nl:On the Beach (Boek) sv:På stranden
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