Actors - On the Beach

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	Actors - On the Beach

On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world novel written by British author Nevil Shute after he had emigrated to Australia.

The novel was adapted for the screenplay of a 1959 movie featuring Gregory Peck (USS Sawfish captain Dwight Lionel Towers), Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire (scientist Julian Osborne) and Anthony Perkins (Australian sailor Peter Holmes). It was directed by Stanley Kramer, who won the 1960 BAFTA for best director. Ernest Gold won the 1960 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Score.

There was also a 2000 television movie featuring Armand Assante, Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward and directed by Russell Mulcahy.

Plot

The story (a realistic candidate for the saddest ever written) is set in what was then the near-term future (1963 in the book, 1964, in the earlier movie, 2006 in the Television production) some time after World War III has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout, which is gradually being carried south by the global air currents. The only part of the planet still inhabitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America.

From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious gibberish Morse code radio signal emitted from the United States. With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, hypothesized by what is called the "Jorgensen Theory", one of the last American nuclear submarines, the USS Sawfish, sails north from its port of refuge in Melbourne, Australia to try to contact whoever is sending the signal. Captain Dwight Towers leads the operation, leaving behind him a woman of recent acquaintance, Moira Davidson, whom he's fallen in love with despite his feelings of guilt with respect to the death of his wife and children.

After sailing almost to the Arctic Circle the expedition determines that radiation levels are not diminishing, but intensifying, and discovers that the emitted radio signal is in fact the result of a broken window frame that is moved by the wind (intermittent sunlight on a solar-powered laptop in the later film). Bitterly disappointed, (most of) the submariners return to Australia to live the little time that remains before the radioactive air arrives and kills everyone.

Despite their best efforts to "enjoy" what time and pleasures remain to them, the characters descend into frustration born of an inability to put the past behind them, even to the point of fulfilling duties which, if momentarily contemplated, are ridiculous. This is best exemplified by Captain Towers, who, rather than remaining with Moira, opts to lead his crew on a final mission to scuttle their boat beyond the twelve-mile limit, rather than have her rattling about, unsecured, in a foreign port - this despite the obvious observation that everyone will be dead anyway, so why should this matter? Most of the Australians opt for the government-promoted alternative of suicide by cyanide pills at the first onset of radiation-sickness symptoms, rather than waiting to die from the full-blown effects. An interesting aspect of the plot, commented upon by the characters, is that in Shute's world, people do not for the most part flee southward as refugees, but rather accept their fate once the lethal radiation levels reach the latitude at which they live.

The incident which is stated in the book, though not mentioned in the film, to have begun the war is the bombing of the United Kingdom by Egypt. The aircraft used were obtained from the USSR and so the attack was mistaken as one led by the Soviets, leading to a retaliation on the USSR by the NATO powers. It seems to refer to the then contemporary Suez crisis. In the 2000 television movie, the Third World War was sparked by the People's Republic of China launching an all-out invasion of Taiwan which brought the United States to the defence of Taiwan. After the U.S. deployed their forces to defend Taiwan and attacked the Chinese invasion forces with conventional military forces, the Chinese launched an all-out nuclear missile attack on the North American continent which resulted in the United States launching an all-out nuclear strike on mainland China.

Much of the novel's action takes place in Melbourne, close to the southernmost part of the Australian mainland. Shute is said to have despised the first movie version, which was released little more than a year prior to his death, feeling that his characters had been altered too greatly.

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