Review of On the Beach (1959) by Edith N — 29 Mar 2008

I don't remember which one said it, but one of the MST3K writers, well, wrote in the [i]Amazing Colossal Episode Guide[/i] (I believe in reference to the awful [i]Warrior of the Lost World[/i]) that your average post-apocalyptic story is too easy. I mean, anyone can say what happens after--though this version of the apocalypse ensures that it won't be much--but what happens during is more difficult. I cannot help wondering if whichever-one-it-was had [i]On the Beach[/i] in mind. It's true that our story starts the day the atomic war has ended, but we are seeing those last few, fleeting days of the human race.

In this oddly tidy apocalypse, the last place on Earth with a human population is, believe it or not, Australia. No bombs have fallen here, but it doesn't matter. Sooner or later, the fallout will hit, and everyone will die. The radiation will just be that severe. Everyone will die. Think about how grim that would be. Stolid Gregory Peck, the captain of the American submarine. Lovely Ava Gardner of the shady past. Anthony "Norman Bates" Perkins and his wife and infant daughter. Yes, really, Fred Astaire without a tapshoe in sight. Every last one of them is doomed, and no one can do anything about it. This is the kind of heavy-duty stuff that made Graham flee to the living room for two hours. It's true that there is more to our story than that, but we know what it's leading up to.

There seems to be hope. Peck's submarine has picked up what appears to be a directed--human--signal from somewhere in California. If there is someone alive there, that must mean there's a way of surviving. Peck and his crew set out in a last-ditch effort to save something of humanity, and we watch everyone deal with the consequences. That's the thing, here. At its root, we are exploring human issues, and this is just one more place to put people and watch what happens. Of course, we all know what Gregory Peck will do, because he's Gregory Peck--but he does, after all, manage to surprise us. And of course, there's Tony Perkins and his family.

About that tidy apocalypse--I wasn't kidding. It isn't merely the fact that no bombs fell on Australia, an unlikely prospect at best. (I can only assume that the film's writers thought only the US and the USSR would be targeted.) The submarine surfaces in two US cities. Two [i]major[/i] US cities, both with, at least at the time, pretty prominent military bases. One, if I caught where they were accurately, [i]still[/i] has one of the largest bases in the country near it. But all the buildings are standing. A crewman who swims ashore to his hometown of San Francisco is able to find Alka-Seltzer[sup]TM[/sup] and beer. In what I believe to be San Diego, the only real sign of destruction is a broken neon sign. I can't fathom where the bombs actually did fall, all things considered, and how enough of them could have fallen to have killed the entire human population of the Earth. (What it did to other species can only be guessed at, as the film doesn't bother talking about it.) It's rather closer to the entire human population having just been beamed up.

Still, for a movie of its era, not bad. At least it's asking us to [i]think[/i] about the possibility of nuclear annihilation, even if it's the tame kind. Unrestrained militarism is not positive. Quite the opposite. And we believe it, because Gregory Peck says.