On the Beach (1959) is a post-apocalyptic drama film based on Nevil Shute's 1957 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. It was remade as an Australian television film by Southern Star Productions in 2000.
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 human 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.
From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious and incomprehensible wireless telegraphy signal originating from the United States (San Diego). With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, 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 and headquarters of the Australian Navy) to try to contact whomever 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 has 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.
The Australian government makes arrangements to provide its citizens with free suicide 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, referred to once as "Charlie" early in the film), 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, a trip expected to take several weeks, Peter must try to explain to Mary how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the lethal pills should he be unable to return in time. Mary, however, reacts badly, almost violently, at the prospect of killing her daughter and herself.
By one theory postulated by an Australian scientist, the radiation near the Arctic Ocean could be less than that at mid northern hemisphere latitudes, and if so this would indicate the possible survival of southern hemisphere populations. One of the goals of the expedition is to determine the Arctic radiation level.
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 to buildings. One crewman, who is from San Francisco, jumps ship to spend his last hours in his hometown. After first attempting to convince the crewman to return, Towers then accepts his decision. He is last seen in a motorboat, fishing and awaiting his death as the Sawfish submerges, never to return.
Sawfish then travels to an abandoned oil refinery in San Diego (in the book, it is a naval base located near Seattle), where they discover, although the city's residents have long since perished from radiation poisoning, the 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 time that remains before nuclear fallout 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 apparent violent deaths of several participants. Moira remarks on the apparent senselessness of the race, but when she asks Osborne why he is taking part, he responds, "because I want to" -- apparently sufficient reason given the circumstances.
Prior to the submarine voyage to America, Towers had remarked to Moira about his enjoyment of the silence and relaxation of his pastime of fishing. During his absence, Moira uses her friendship with government officials to 'move up' the fishing season so Dwight will get one more chance to fish. With Towers now apparently accepting the death of his wife and children, they embark on a weekend trip. Unfortunately, the fishing stream is anything but silent and relaxing, as raucous visitors turn the outing into a fiasco. Retreating to the resort for the night, Dwight and Moira share a romantic interlude inside the dark hotel room, as outside, a gathering storm howls.
Returning to Melbourne, Towers is informed 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 exhorting that "There Is Still Time ... Brother".
Osborne, proud and satisfied after winning the auto race, seals himself and the car, engine running, inside a garage to set up his suicide by exhaust poisoning. Others line up outside hospitals to receive their suicide pills. Later, Mary Holmes becomes emotionally unbalanced and must be placed under sedation. However, she regains lucidity and she and Peter share a tender moment together before Mary decides that she has 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 and die in the U.S. In the end, Captain Towers chooses not to remain with Moira but rather to lead his crew in a final attempt to make it back to the States. Moira watches from the shore as the Sawfish submerges beneath the waves. The final scenes of the movie show the deserted, abandoned streets of Melbourne. The last shot, punctuated by emphatic music, is pointedly of the "There Is Still Time ... Brother" banner.
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[who?] 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 it is implied Moira and Dwight sleep together. However, the film shot in and around Melbourne was a great novelty for that city at the time.[citation needed]
Production
The racing sequences were filmed at Riverside Raceway in California. These scenes include an impressive array of late 1950s sports cars, including examples of the Jaguar XK150 and Jaguar D-type, Porsche 356, Mercedes-Benz 300 SL "Gullwing", AC Ace, and Chevrolet Corvette.
Differences between novel and film
Nevil Shute was displeased with the final version of the film, feeling that too many changes had been made at the expense of the story's integrity.[1] Gregory Peck agreed with him, but in the end, producer/director Stanley Kramer's ideas won out.
- In the novel, the submarine is named Scorpion. In the film, she is called Sawfish.
- The novel describes Moira Davidson as a slender, petite pale blond in her mid-twenties. In the film, she is portrayed by the tall, curvaceous, brunette 37-year old Ava Gardner.
- A naval base in Seattle is the location in the novel where the strange Morse signals are detected. The film uses an oil refinery in San Diego as its location.
- Buildings in San Francisco are shown as undamaged in the film, while in the novel the city has been largely destroyed with the Golden Gate Bridge having fallen.
- The northernmost point of the submarine's journey in the novel is the Gulf of Alaska, while the film uses Point Barrow. In reality, ice cover would have made it impossible for the submarine to have surfaced off Point Barrow.
- The nuclear scientist in the book is named John Osborne, a thirty-something 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.
- 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. 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 suicide 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. Although he realises that they probably will not survive the passage, he does as they request. In the film, Ava Gardner is seen merely watching Dwight's submarine disappear, and is not seen to commit suicide at that time. However, such an ending may be implied by the existence of suicide pills earlier in the film.
Academy Awards
The film score played heavily on the motif of "Waltzing Matilda".
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.[2]
Miscellany
- 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 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 (1966), [1]. Some examples are: Shute Avenue (Nevil Shute) and Kramer Drive (Stanley Kramer).
- The Davidson farm is now a large housing estate, a part of the outer South Eastern suburb of Narre Warren North. However, the electricity pylons on the hill visible in the film are still there, although there are 4 lines instead of one. The hill has not been built upon.
- An additional scene was shot in Melbourne night-club Ciro's. Among the audience in the scene were several popular Melbourne television personalities, most notably Graham Kennedy. The scene was not used in the cinema release of the film, and does not feature in the various DVD releases. It is not known if the scene was included in any released version of the film.
See also
Notes
External links
