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 fallout has killed the populations of most of the rest of the globe. His busywork orders are to ascertain how long before
radiation arrives to put everybody Down Under, under. Each character
deals with rapidly oncoming doom differently: Ava Gardener, playing her a cynical
broad, tries to lose herself in booze and her crush on the Greg; Fred
Astaire, a cocky, devil-may-care race car driver, decides to go out pressing pedal 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.
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