On the Beach
Description
The war is over. Nobody won. Only the inhabitants of Australia and the men of the US submarine Sawfish have escaped the nuclear destruction and radiation. Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) takes the Sawfish on a mission to see if an approaching radiation cloud has weakened, but returns with grim news: the cloud is lethal. With the days and hours dwindling, each person confronts the grim situation in his or her own way. One (Fred Astaire) realizes a lifetime Grand Prix am… More >>
Tags: Beach
Beach travelling product | July 26, 2010
5 Comments to “On the Beach”
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By Stephen Quinn, July 15, 2010 @ 7:47 pm
Nothing is worse than Hollywood when it preaches. You half expect Al Gore to make a cameo appearance, wailing hysterically about “climate change”. But I guess in 1959, he was sitting on his mom’s lap, singing “Look for the Union Label.” It’s a shame to see so much talent go up in politically correct smoke.
Rating: 1 / 5
By Anonymous, July 15, 2010 @ 8:51 pm
On the beach did have interesting scientific information. BUT it didn’t have an interesting plot, it is not well presented through the language…it had a good topic and a good idea however it did not appeal to me and my class. when i started reading the book, i knew how it ended… there was not enough on how people feel and react and it’s more about the scientific and technical things. Also, it was not realistic on how the people reacted to the situation.
Rating: 1 / 5
By Mrs Baldwin, July 15, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
In one word – Depressing. In another word – Bleak. In one last word – Long.
I watched this only because I wanted to give Anthony Perkins another chance after “Psycho”, and also because Gregory Peck was in it. Fred Astaire was a depressing drunk scientist obsessed with his Ferrari – he was much better in Top Hat. Ava Gardner was another tippler obsessed with Gregory – she was much better in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Gregory Peck was obsessed with his dead family – he was also better in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and even better in “Spellbound”, “Roman Holiday”, and “The Keys of the Kingdom”. Anthony Perkins was chillingly Norman Bates-ey. I’ll never think of him any other way. Only as Cornelius Hackl in “The Matchmaker” was he slightly convincing as something besides a maniac killer. Whoever played Anthony’s wife mustn’t have impressed me much cause I don’t remember much about her.
This film does have a message. “Brother, there is still time.” I don’t believe the world will end the way this movie portrays, but however the End Times come about, RIGHT NOW there is still time to get right with the Maker! All the same, there have to be shorter and less depressing ways to portray the same message.
So there you have my opinion. In my world, On the Beach is On the Way Out.
Rating: 2 / 5
By A reader, July 15, 2010 @ 11:43 pm
One of the strangest, most disjunct, dully polemical and just plain bad films to come out of the period. It’s as if 3 movies were put in a blender and whipped together: tiresome distopian polemic, love story and submarine epic. How anybody could call Kramer’s directing to be brilliant is a total mystery to me. About as subtle as being hit over the head. Ava Gardner looks dissipated and everyone seems to be sleepwalking. The sets are weirdly sanitized, and not one corpse is ever seen, leading you to believe that perhaps everybody just went on vacation and didn’t bother to tell the Navy.
Rating: 1 / 5
By Levent Salt, July 16, 2010 @ 12:07 am
I read the book “On the beach” when I was around 13. Since then, I use to read the book from time to time and feel the very same: death is near and we all die soon. Then I feel the meaninglessness of being alive while the death is so close.
However, I cannot say the same things for the movie. The very bright and stunning stars acted in the movie, the beauty Ava Gardner, psycho Anthony Perkins (I loved the looks on his eyes throughout the movie, he was still the Psycho, not Lieutenant Somebody of RAN), good old sailor Gregory Peck and, still do not know why, Fred Astaire – the dancer and romantic. However, the result was not so stunning and effective. The movie definitely need some hardworking and editing. There are many questions remaining in the mind after watching the movie. For example, Ava Gardner meets Gregory Peck at the station and “rides” him to Anthony Perkins’ house by a single horse cart, but at the end of the movie, she was driving a very fast convertible car to follow the sub cruising to USA. Another thing is that while there was a fuel shortage and everyone was riding horses and bikes, it was not clear how it was possible to arrange an Australian Grand Prix. But much frustrating of all, to me, was that the sub hand landed to San Diego to search for the reasons of the meaningless radio signals: He was carrying two oxygen bottles at the back and still able to run without any sign of fatigue. I am a diver myself and know how heavy those bottles are, even one of them, and I cannot imagine their weight at those days in which light aluminum alloys were not so common, but still, he was able to run like a coyote. Another thing, the church band playing under the banner “There is still time…brother” was something that recalls the heroic band of Titanic who continued playing until the sinking of the ship, so it looked alien in this movie.
But the most true and pleasant sentence to me was the answer of Fred Astaire to one of the sub crew asking who to blame for the destruction: “Blame Einstein”.
After all, this DVD can still be bought due to the 5-star actors and actresses of its era (and may be still), but the movie itself does not worth buying, especially if you read the book.
Rating: 1 / 5