he year is 1964. A global thermonuclear war has wiped out most of humanity. Australia still struggles on, retaining all the trappings of civilization despite fuel shortages and the common knowledge that the radiation clouds now drifting south will poison everybody left in approximately five months.
Naval officer Peter Holmes (Perkins) exemplifies the universal attitude that life should go on as before for as long as possible; he remains devoted to his wife and baby daughter even as he calls in favors to obtain the suicide pills that will spare them all the painful and lingering symptoms of radiation poisoning when the time comes. His hardest struggle is with Mary (Donna Anderson), who, like many of the doomed Australians, struggles to maintain an epic sense of denial that anything's gone wrong.
Dwight Towers (Peck) is the captain of a U.S. nuclear submarine that has survived the war and found refuge in Australia. When Holmes sets him up with the local borderline alcoholic, Moira Davidson (Gardner), he engages in his spasm of denial, briefly persuading himself that he's with the wife he left behind in Idaho. She snaps him out of that and exposes the grief behind his professional, dignified facade.
With time running out, and with the cooperation of the Australian government, Capt. Towers adds Peter Holmes and local scientist Julian Osborn (Astaire) to his crew and embarks on one last mission. Its dual objectives: confirming that the radioactive clouds will drift south as expected ... and determining the origin of a strange, random series of beeps coming from a wireless near San Diego.
Not with a bang, but with a martini
Once upon a time, just acknowledging the threat seemed brave.
On the Beach, once a minor classic, hasn't aged very well in the more than four decades since its initial release. It drags, for one thing. For another, it's one thing to have the last remnants of humanity show dignity and courage in the face of their inevitable doom, another to pretend that everybody will face the apocalypse with the same degree of equanimity.
The two worst reactions we see here come, with the logic of the time, from the two women: Mary Holmes, who deals with the disaster by refusing to think about it, and Moira Davidson, who gets drunk on a nightly basis until she's redeemed by her attraction to the stalwart Capt. Towers. Aside from that, everybody just carries on: People still hold on to their jobs, still use money, still mingle at dinner parties. Isn't there anybody, anywhere in this parade of determined gentility who panics? Goes insane? Says "To Hell With the Nine-To-Five"? Acts on their basest impulses, when they know that there are not going to be any consequences?
In fact, why is everybody so friendly with the captain of an American nuclear submarine? Wouldn't he represent, to these people, a major cause of the doom that faces them all? How come nobody tells him he has one hell of a nerve showing up at their dinner parties with a smile on his face? How come nobody takes a swing at him? We don't need everybody to act that way, but isn't it hard to believe, now, that nobody would? And just what is this overpowering attraction between him and Moira all about, when there's little evident chemistry on screen?
The logical questions go on and on. You don't have to nitpick about whether radioactive clouds would really drift south and poison everybody in the precise manner depicted by the film. There's more: When a crewman jumps ship in San Francisco Bay, how come neither the notorious frigidity of the water nor the even more famous force of the current, both sufficient to keep convicts trapped on Alcatraz Island, overpower him before he reaches shore? How come all our picture-postcard views of that city (untouched by bombs) show no dead bodies and all the cars neatly parked? How come the radiation suit worn by one crewman has loose pant cuffs over what seem to be regular shoes? And would crewmen who knew the world was going to end in five months really have no objections (none of them!) to spending four of those months still locked in a tin can, obeying the chain of command of a country that no longer exists? Wouldn't even one or two of them prefer to spend their last months trying to enjoy the pleasures of the harbor instead? And how come none of the Australians have Australian accents?
The questions go on and on, but the end result is clear. On the Beach retains some strong performances. The best of those comes from Perkins, in one of the last normal-guy roles he enjoyed before Psycho typecast him as a twitchy weirdo forever. There are also some powerful closing scenes and a truly inspired bit of business involving the explanation for the random signals emanating from San Diego. It's worth seeing, but time has made it creak.
