On the Beach (1959)
Directed by Stanley Kramer
In 1964, atomic war wipes out humanity in the northern hemisphere; one American submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life-as-usual covers growing despair. In denial about the loss of his wife and children in the holocaust, American Captain Towers meets careworn but gorgeous Moira Davidson, who begins to fall for him. The sub returns after reconnaissance a month (or less) before the end; will Towers and Moira find comfort with each other?
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What critics compared On the Beach to
Our fears showed up in the movies, too, in Cold War dramas like Sidney Lumet’s 1964 Fail Safe or apocalyptic thrillers like Stanley Kramer’s 1959 On the Beach.
Ditto the not-made-for-TV When the Wind Blows, The Quiet Earth, and On the Beach.
Nevil Shute’s On the Beach was made into a sombre film by Stanley Kramer in 1959…
Stanley Kramer’s 1959 On the Beach that ended with the last gasp of humanity in an empty Australian town after the nuclear fallout has passed through…
But in general, the tone is a throwback to many of the old school kind of thrillers that took larger-than-life concepts and fears, and grounded them in a cynical psychology; films like Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach where most of the world ended in nuclear explosion, yet Australians are forced to quizzically carry on as if nothing happened while radioactive fallout inches closer every passing week.
Immortan Joe represents the elder white male always at the apex of power structures in society; the lawmaker who is always deciding what’s best for women and what they should do with their bodies; a relic whose political greed is responsible for killing the world – Miller takes heavy cues from Nevil Shute’s On The Beach and Stanley Kramer’s film adaptation when it comes to Earth’s poisoning.
This plays as a soft-spoken, contemplative, less-action-packed version of “Avatar,” though its tonal sci-fi sisters are the melancholy “Solaris” and fatalistic classic “On the Beach.”