On the Beach (1959) on Netflix
Approved19592h 14mDramaRomanceSci-Fi
In 1964, after nuclear war destroys the north, the submarine USS Sawfish reaches Melbourne, where Commander Dwight Lionel Towers and the city's residents wait for the fallout to arrive.
- Netflix2.6/5
- IMDb7.1/1016,383 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1964, the nuclear submarine USS Sawfish arrives in Australia after the worldwide nuclear holocaust. Commander Dwight Lionel Towers confirms that the world has been destroyed and the nuclear dust is coming to Australia. The widower Cmdr. Towers, who grieves the death of his wife and children, is befriended by Royal Australian Navy Lieutenant Peter Holmes, who is a family man with wife and the newborn baby Jennifer. He has a lover affair with the local Moira Davidson, a still beautiful alcoholic woman with a past, and she falls in love with him. Cmdr. Towers and his crew invite the drunkard scientist Julian Osborne to join them in their reconnaissance voyage to the further North and to the United States, and they return hopeless and aware that Australia and the rest of the mankind has very few days until the doomsday.
Cast
- Joe McCormickas Ackerman (radiation sickness)
- Lou Vernonas Bill Davidson (Moira's father)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about On the Beach (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ava Gardner is said to have described Melbourne as the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world, but the quotation was invented by journalist Neil Jillett of The Sydney Morning Herald. The quote entered Melbourne folklore very quickly.
- The U.S. Department of Defense refused to cooperate in the production and denied access to its nuclear-powered submarines, so the British submarine HMS Andrew was used to portray the USS Sawfish.
- Nevil Shute, author of the original novel, was displeased with the final cut, feeling it contained too many changes at the expense of the story's integrity, and gave only minimal assistance after an initial collaboration with Stanley Kramer. He felt the love affair between Towers and Moira ruined Towers' fidelity to his dead wife.
- Seeing On the Beach in Australia while filming Ned Kelly inspired Mick Jagger to write the words to Gimme Shelter.
- Premieres in New York, London, Tokyo, Stockholm and Melbourne were attended by local and foreign dignitaries, and the film was even screened in a theater at Little America in Antarctica. Though it had no commercial release in the Soviet Union, a special premiere was held in Moscow, which Peck and his wife attended.
- Ava Gardner's wardrobe was created in Rome by the Fontana Sisters, three iconic Italian fashion designers who had previously dressed Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa and The Sun Also Rises.
SPOILER
At the end of the novel the submarine is scuttled while Moira ingests suicide pills, but in the film the submarine returns to the U.S. and Moira's fate is not depicted.
