On the Beach (1959)

Is "under-wrought" a word? If so, this movie defines it. A great cast never seems like its acting in an all-too-realistic portrayal of the fifth Kubler-Ross phase of humanity. Past denial and anger, there is finally grim acceptance, replete with just the perfect sprinkling of gallows humour. The ultimate philosophical question is raised by author Nevil Chute,"What is truly important in life, if in the end, we're all dead?"

Fmovies: May I enter a minority report? I hate this film as much as Nevil Shute (author of the novel On the Beach) did.

Shute's biggest complaint was the film's distortion of the character of Commander Dwight Towers. In the novel, Towers' "coping mechanism" is an alternative reality: the conviction that "when all this blows over" he was going to return to his wife and family in Connecticut; he even buys them presents to take home. "You may think I'm nuts," he tells Moira, "but that's how I see it." Moira's greatest achievement is to enter into his alternative reality and to promise to visit him in Connecticut. Indeed, to Moira's sorrow, the two do not consummate their relationship; Towers will not, cannot, cheat on his wife. The mercenary Stanley Kramer would have none of this: the film, he decided, needed sex. Gregory Peck, to his credit, tried to argue Kramer out of this distortion, but Kramer wouldn't budge.

Like all Shute's novels, On the Beach is about ordinary people triumphing over an impossible situation. The characters in Shute's story talk of simple pleasures and go on with their lives, planting flowers and beautifying their homes, talking of "the situation" and "when it comes" in careful euphemisms, not in denial but quietly aware that soon and very soon they must make their plans about how they are going to spend the end. My favorite scene is in the furniture store, when Peter Holmes says "Can I pay with a checque?" The clerk answers in the affirmative, and they exchange their documents with dignity, like gentlemen, without bitter recriminations or snide end-of-the-world jokes and with no pathetic attempts to utter profundities. The movie, I fear, betrays the mood of the novel: in the movie, the characters do nothing from start to finish other than moping, moping and moping. This makes the film sentimental, corny and downright mushy. The novel has none of those qualities.

Kramer made the mistake of imagining this story to be about nuclear war, or the aftermath thereof. He's utterly wrong. The story is about the triumph of the human spirit over impossible odds.

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.

On the Beach fmovies. I was/am not an actor, but I was a Fulbright at the University of Melbourne 1958-1960. When the U.S. Navy and Stanley Kramer fell out, he needed bit players with an American accent. As a result, I was recruited to play the (nameless) part of the planesman ("Depth 45 feet, Sir" and other immortal lines).

It was great fun. I worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (really -- though most of the time was spent playing poker -- made more money playing poker than I did for acting) for two weeks at the Melbourne Fair Grounds. Met and chatted with all the participants other than Ava Gardner, who had no truck with anyone other than her Spanish cameraman.

I was very impressed by Kramer and his writer. 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.

One of the most potent movies I've ever seen. Chilling! Although appearance of movie is dated...it should be...filmed in 1956. The characters, situation, emotion are timeless. The date of the movie in no way weakens the strength of the story. Only slight weakness is the relationship between Peck and Gardner. Too much time spend on these two at times distracts from story. Still it does set up a moving ending in which devotion to duty, comrades, (in a situation where such devotion is meaningless) deepens our awareness of humanity. Not for the weak of heart. No happy endings here!! All the more powerful for its non hollywood approach, we need more of these movies. Instead of finishing the moving feeling good, we finish THINKING GOOD. Much more important goal of a movie if you ask me.

On The Beach was made in 1959 and it's still a fantastic movie some 46 years later. As great as all the performances are, the photography and the script are as out-standing.

The only drawback to this black & white classic is the hauntingly depressing nature of the film. Death is never easy to explore and it's done here tastefully, gritty, and realistically. Gregory Peck shines in this controversial role. Ava Gardner gives her finest performance. Fred Astaire is incredible in this serious role. However, the film was stolen by the pre-Psycho Anthoney Perkins and newcomer Donna Anderson as a doomed young couple with a new baby. The ending of On The Beach is one of the most depressing in screen history, still this is a must see for any fan of any of the actors or the legendary Stanly Kramer.