On the Beach (1959)

Well folks, it’s been a helluva while since I’ve gotten the chance to do a good and honest Book to Film Comparison but alas…that time is upon us again.

Not too long ago, I was doing one of my bi-weekly thrift store wanderings and I stumbled upon a paperback copy of the 1957 science fiction / drama novel On the Beach, by Nevil Shute.

Now, I was familiar with this title, as my past research into other ‘real world apocalypse’ stories like The War Game (1965), The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984) yielded prominent mention of this novel and its 1959 cinematic adaptation, which holds the distinction of being the first anti-nuclear war film to be released by a major American film studio ever.

I scored the book for 4 whole dollars and dove into it, not quite knowing what to expect. When I reached the end, I decided that, despite its age, I was legitimately curious to check out how the movie version turned out (the B/W original, not the 1990 made-for-TV attempt, though I am curious), and would it manage to improve on some issues with the novel that I came away with.

A few small changes aside, the narrative for both the novel and the movie play out very similarly:

In a 1964 of the future (remember, written in ’57), the Cold War has finally boiled over and WW3 has become a horrifying reality.

In Australia, we meet the American commander of the USS Sawfish (in the book, the submarine is named the Scorpion), ‘Dwight Towers’ (Gregory Peck). His vessel is the last US submarine on active duty, as he and his crew were able to escape the catastrophic war zone that waged in the Northern Hemisphere and ended up joining the Royal Australian Navy.

While the population awaits the inevitable arrival of lethal doses of radioactivity on the winds from the north, the Admiralty decides that one last mission for the Sawfish is warranted and they opt to assign a liaison officer named ‘Peter Holmes’ (Anthony Perkins) to the ship.

It seems that a radio transmission has been detected from somewhere on the American west coast and it must be investigated.

As they prepare, we are introduced to other folks within their sphere, namely a scientist named ‘Julian Osborne’ (Fred Astaire), a drunken ‘good time gal’ named ‘Moira Davidson’ (Ava Gardner) and ‘Holmes’ own wife ‘Mary’ (Donna Anderson), who is struggling to cope with the knowledge of the impending extinction of mankind.

Part of the story examines how the average citizens are going about their lives while also coping with the increasing supply shortages and the growing reports of approaching radiation sickness, while the remainder delves into the harrowing mission into heavily irradiated territory to investigate the mysterious radio signal.

I had a bitch of a time finding a copy of this and when no streaming options availed themselves, I gave in to the siren song of Amazon and scored myself a used DVD copy (no Blu ray needed for this title).

This morning, a Saturday, at the ungodly hour of 5am, I brewed up a pot of strong coffee, slipped the disc in, and grabbed my notepad.

Here lie them scribbles…

–Norman Bates = family man? As previously mentioned, Anthony Perkins plays a prominent role as an officer dedicated to his wife and infant daughter, which at times was odd for two key reasons – 1) In my mind, when I think ‘Anthony Perkins’, the image of the murderous momma’s boy ‘Norman Bates’, from Hitchcock’s masterful 1960 suspense classic Psycho, effortlessly comes to mind, and 2) knowing where on the LGBTQ spectrum Perkins sat made his scenes of physical affection with Donna Anderson…interesting…to behold.

*In all fairness, despite being surprisingly open about his homosexuality, Perkins remained married to a woman (and had two kids!) until he died in 1992, for better or worse.

–Aren’t they supposed to be Aussies? Barely an accent. Continuing on with Anthony Perkins, his ‘Peter Holmes’ character is supposed to be Australian, both in the book and in this adaptation. Though you would never know it, as there is no attempt whatsoever to speak with anything resembling an Australian accent. The same thing applies to Fred Astaire (yes, THAT Fred Astaire) and his supposedly British character of ‘Osborne’. No attempt at all. Also, and this may paint me as ignorant, but I swear that everyone that was supposed to be Aussie sounded like they were from somewhere in the UK, despite the fact that chunk of this flick was actually filmed on location Down Under.

–Impressive production. There are some street scenes early on which were surprisingly large-scale and detailed, especially in the depiction of travel now occurring via bicycles and horses, as fuel is now strictly rationed. This was straight out of the book and I was impressed.

–Oh Moira, you drunken hussy. As annoying as in the book. So, Ava Gardner’s ‘Moira’ character is one of the issues I had with the book and unfortunately, Gardner’s portrayal is just faithful enough have ruffled my feathers onscreen as well as on the page. She’s a shallow, scheming drunk who has no real qualms about being known as the ‘town pump’ and the ‘relationship’ she enters into with Peck’s ‘Commander Towers’ grated on my nerves, though they do define it better onscreen than in the novel.

–Some odd Dutch angles. For those who don’t know, a ‘Dutch angle’ is a stylistic composition that some directors employ even still, usually to convey that something is amiss in a scene, and it’s simply tilting the frame and holding with the shot off-kilter. Director Stanley Kramer used this a few times and I couldn’t figure out why, as nothing narratively seemed to denote the need.

–The constant orchestral score in slower moments distracting. The cinematic sensibilities of the time this was made are something that must be kept in mind when delving into films from this time period and beyond. One such element was the near-constant use of music, especially during scenes that would’ve benefited greatly from an absence of sound. But again, guiding the audiences through the narrative with a manipulative and in-your-face score was definitely par for the course in those days.

–The crew looks like they wanted Moira dead. There’s a sequence where ‘Moira’ makes her way to the Navy shipyard and gains access to the Sawfish. As she sashays along the dock, we are treated to numerous shots of various sailors and dock crew watching her as she goes. Now, I wasn’t expecting / hoping for full-on leering and obviously sexist behaviour, but the expressions on everyone suggested they’d rather kill her than fuck her. The scene does end on a cat-call, but seriously, I wonder what the direction on set was that day.

-“Here, have a cigarette.” Oh, the 50’s. Yep, those goddamn cigarettes. It’s the first thing offered as ‘Towers’ takes ‘Moira’ to his cabin after her unannounced arrival at the boat and given how ugh tobacco smoking is these days, it was just cynically amusing to see the casualness of the offer.

–Canada Bay? WTF? As a proud Canadian, I always love seeing anything pertaining to this great country on the Big Screen and when the signage for this location popped up, I had to note it. That is all.

–Oh Moira, you calamity. ‘Moira’ is a drunk, full stop. This is very apparent in a scene at the tail-end of a house party thrown by the ‘Holmes’ where she is trying to fire up a deep and drunken conversation with ‘Towers’, only she’s too pissed up to delve too deep and subsequently passes out. Though I will admit that her alcoholism is down-played in comparison to her literary version, who’s main drive at any given time seems to be downing whatever booze she can get her hands on.

-“Sex?” That’s ballsy for the 50’s. This caught me off guard. During a group trip to the beach, ‘Moira’ is tossing questions at ‘Towers’ as part of her bid to make him forget his most likely dead wife and kids, and at one point she asks “What do you think about while the dentist is drilling? Sex?” Again, this is 1959 and it could very well be ignorance on my part regarding the openness of conversation topics in the 1950’s, though given the less-than-virtuous character of ‘Moira’, maybe a bit of shock at her crassness was the point.

–Towers and Moira’s ‘relationship’ as frustrating as in the book. And here we come to one of my biggest gripes about this story. In the book, it’s prominently detailed that ‘Towers’ is holding on tight to the memory of his wife and kids back in the States, pretending that they’re still alive and that somehow, he’s going to get back to them. As a result, he never fully succumbs to ‘Moira’s charms and they continue in this arms-length, maybe-in-a-different life facsimile of a romantic relationship…without the actual romance.

The movie does change that up and a romance does bloom, however doomed, but for a while, I found my irritation at the silly and unfulfilling dynamic returning.

– Camera shadow? There’s a scene while the Sawfish is on mission where some characters are poised around a bank of instruments waiting for a radiation reading and at one point, there is a dramatic ‘push in’…during which the plain-as-day shadow of the camera can be seen moving as the composition changes. It was so obvious I actually chuckled out loud.

-“You would’ve thought I was a murderer.” Says Norman Bates. It just couldn’t be helped. He says the line…and I instantly picture him slicing up poor Janet Leigh in a shower with a butchers knife, even though in this context he’s talking about his wife’s reaction to him broaching the subject of eventually having to mercy-kill their own daughter when the radiation arrives.

–Admittedly, some nice cinematography. There’s definitely some nice shots that pop up, especially during the submarines mission to the West Coast of North America. Impressive for the time.

–Intrusive score again. San Fran arrival scene.  There is value in silence, or just the ambient sounds of a scene, and the sequence showing the submarine arriving off the California coast was needlessly orchestral.

–Wow. Swain conversation. Well done. As they are conducting their reconnaissance from the harbour, one of the crew, a young guy named ‘Swain’, who grew up in San Francisco, decides that he wants to take his chances with the lethal amounts of radiation in the air and jumps overboard, swimming for the docks. The next day, we see ‘Swain’ fishing from a boat he commandeered. Suddenly, the periscope rises next to him and he gets into a conversation with ‘Towers’ over the sub’s loudspeaker. As they wrap up their chat, the sub suddenly rises to the surface and I swear it looks like they actually did it. It was a cool scene that stood out when the flick was over.

–Hilarious rear projection. Grand Prix. As to be expected in movies from this time period, occasionally a REALLY obvious rear-projection shot will sneak in amongst all the real, high-speed racing footage used to show the last Australian Grand Prix ever. But here…it’s not used as often as I would’ve expected.

–Some damn impressive car stunts. Smashing cars and blowing them up ‘in camera’ is always cool, and here they pulled off some seriously dangerous-looking crashes and fire stunts.

–USS Sawfish? Why the name change? I admit that I’m asking this question a bit late in the proceedings but since it was prominently displayed on ‘Towers’ wind-breaker, it did make me wonder: why the change from USS Scorpion to USS Sawfish? I’ve yet to find an answer.

–Um…not exactly a tight seal there, Osborne. *SPOILER* In the book, the character of ‘Julian Osborne’, after having survived and won the Grand Prix, begins to get very sick, very fast, as the radiation settles over the city and the last mention is him swallowing, with difficulty, the government-provided suicide pill that was issued to the population in the final days. In the movie, ‘Osborne’, as played by Fred Astaire, instead stuffs a drop cloth under his garage door, climbs into his prized Ferrari and gases himself to death with the exhaust. Trouble is, the large double doors have enough large holes that making the garage air-tight enough to kill him looked pretty improbable.

–OK, they changed the core relationship. Moira + Towers. As mentioned before, the ‘relationship’ these two get into frustrated the hell out of me in literary form and threatened to do likewise onscreen. But it seems that somewhere along the way they opted to dispense with ambiguity and just let them fall in love, instead of him hanging onto the idea of his obviously dead family not being dead to the point where it makes him seem mentally unhinged, as I found in the book.

–Like the book, appropriately dour ending. *SPOILERS* So the book ends with ‘Moira’ sitting in her car at the beach after watching the USS Scorpion being taken to sea by ‘Towers’ for the purposes of self-sacrifice through the scuttling of the boat. She downs her suicide tablets with a swig of brandy and the story ends. Onscreen, she does watch the USS Sawfish pass by, has a long meaningful meeting-of-the-gazes with ‘Towers’ from his position on the conning tower, and then gets in her car and the last we see of her is the back of her head as she stares out to sea. I can only assume we’re meant to imagine that she does opt to punch her own ticket as in the book version…only we don’t see it.

–On the nose but necessary final shot. Once we get done with ‘Moira’, we cut to an impressive montage of the city of Melbourne still and silent, with not a soul in sight, mirroring the deserted streets of San Francisco that we saw earlier. In a small city park, a banner had been erected stating ‘There is still time…brother.’ We hold on this. This final shot is clearly meant to stimulate the viewers of the day with thoughts of the futility of life after WW3 and how it’s simply not worth it for the Western powers and the Warsaw Pact nations to enter into a battle that will likely kill off everyone involved. Gregory Peck was an openly vocal opponent of nuclear weapons and this last shot feels like a clear message in his ‘voice’.

And that was On the Beach.

In a nutshell, this was an interesting experience. Most of the effective anti-nuke sentiment-on-film titles that I’ve seen are products of the 1980’s, a time period that I was around for, so to go this far back, to see the very first No Nukes movie released by a major studio, based upon a prominent novel tackling the same message, at a time in America when the Red Menace was seemingly lurking everywhere, was rather fascinating, even if both the book and film left me wanting. Both are very much products of their time, which most likely led to the sense of disengagement that I found falling over me, especially during my read.

Another element that I found distracting is the scientific inaccuracies of the core story. Something that hadn’t been considered at the time of both the book and film was the concept of Nuclear Winter, an idea brought about in the late 70’s / early 80’s by a prominent group of scientists and academics, among them the brilliant Carl Sagan. The idea is that it will only take a certain percentage of all the nukes available to throw enough dust and smoke into our atmosphere to blot out the sun for several years, forcing the planet to darken and freeze, bringing about something dangerously akin to a new Ice Age. There isn’t a hint of that in this, whether it be the sequences off the coast of the USA (which should’ve been devastated by more than just the invisible scourge of radiation) or the day-to-day lives in Australia, where again everyone is waiting for / dreading the arrival of the deadly but unseen pollution while partying at the beach or engaging in crazy car races, all under the beautiful Australian sun. Even when the inevitable does come to pass, there is no change in the weather, the empty streets and buildings are brightly lit by sunshine, with not a cloud to be seen. Of course, they didn’t know any better in 1959 and roaming radiation would be a legitimately nasty problem…but not the only one, as depicted.

The cast, like the film itself, is fine, even though I thought Fred Astaire looked bug-eyed and elderly, and every one does do what I deem to be a faithful portrayal of the characters as written. Even though I now own both the book and the DVD, I’m not sure I’ll ever be revisiting either. They’re both…fine, but it needs to be understood going in that they are undeniably products of their time, from concept to execution. From a historical perspective, I’m glad that I both read and watched this story, and on that level, I can recommend On the Beach to the more discerning and historically-savvy viewers, but it’s not going to be one you toss on for the boys on a Friday night over beers.