ON THE BEACH
Movie based on the novel by Nevil Shute, screen play by Alfred Hitchcock. (One of my favorite movies.) Black and white, 1959, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, and Fred Astaire in a fine dramatic performance. And haunting background music of "Waltzing Matilda."

I'm watching it now on Turner Classic Movie channel.
Radiation from nuclear weapons has killed off human beings all over the earth; Australia being the last place where humanity survives and await the end. They are the last people on earth.
An American submarine captain (Peck) and his crew are in Australia and hear an erratic Morse code tapping coming from the California coast. The go off to find the source of the tapping. A crewmember suits up in radiation gear and leaves the sub and goes ashore.

After all the searching and curiosity, they go to a refinery where he finds the source to be the neck of a coke bottle inside the ring of a window shade--breezes move the shade and the bottle is tapping against the keys. One crewmember from San Francisco deserts the sub, and swims ashore knowing he can only survive the radiation for a week at most, but this is his hometown and he prefers to die there.

The sub goes back to Australia, where Peck has met Ava Gardner, and they fall in love. He tells her about his wife and the two daughters he had. Fred Astaire is a scientist who races a sports car in his last days. When the time comes, Astaire chooses his end by going into his closed garage, getting in his beloved car, and turing on the engine. Anthony Perkins, a Navy man, obtains suicide pills for himself, his wife and little daughter. Their final scene is so tender. Families are lining up to obtain the suicide pills.

Peck and Ava go to a fishing resort which is soon full of people with their families coming for a last fishing trip. In a thunderstorm during the night, a basso voice from the boisterous group sings Waltzing Matilda in a mournful dirge that is so melancholy, I cry every time.

Peck asks his crew of submariners what they want to do as the end comes. They want to go home to the USA. Peck says goodbye to Ava and declares his love for her, and the sub departs as she watches from shore. A preacher has had crowds every day in the square. He railed "What madness has driven man to destroy himself?"--overhead is a banner reading "THERE IS STILL TIME--BROTHER." The movie ends with the square empty and the banner still fluttering in the wind.

The only detraction about this movie is the black and white film in some parts is so faded out and blurry. It's a shame no one has restored it yet.

susil