ON THE BEACH (1959) Armageddon in Australia

A palpable air of bleak inevitability hangs over ON THE BEACH, a film both entertaining and cautionary. A U.S. Sub Commander (Greg Peck), a tower of stoicism, solidness and sensitivity, arrives in Australia just as nuclear holocaust is pulverizing most of the rest of the world. His busywork orders are to ascertain how long before radiation arrives to put everybody Down Under, under. Each character deals with impending doom differently: Ava Gardener, playing a cynical broad, loses herself in booze and a crush on the commander; Fred Astaire, a cocky, devil-may-care race car driver, decides to go out with pedal pressed to metal; Anthony Perkins, a sub officer, opts to help his family avoid a slow death with a fast-acting capsule; and Peck, momentarily misplacing a marble or two, angrily refuses to accept the loss of his family back home but of course just keeps goin’ and goin’ and goin’. After all, orders is orders - even when your superiors back home have been A-vaporated.