On the Beach

On the Beach (1959) — watch online one of Hollywood's most sobering anti-war dramas on iFILM. Director Stanley Kramer assembled Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins for a story set in a world that has already destroyed itself: a nuclear exchange has killed the northern hemisphere, and Australia is simply the last place the fallout hasn't reached yet.

American submarine commander Dwight Towers sails into Melbourne knowing his family is gone back home — though some part of him refuses to treat that as settled fact. On shore he meets Moira Davidson, a woman whose coping strategy is a bottle of brandy and a sharp tongue. Their tentative romance unfolds against a clock counting down for the entire surviving population, measured in weeks, not months. Anthony Perkins plays a young scientist whose arc is the film's quietest gut punch.

Adapted from Nevil Shute's 1957 novel, the picture arrived at the height of the Cold War and hit audiences like a civil defense pamphlet that actually had something to say. Fred Astaire, playing against everything audiences expected of him, turned in the performance that surprised even the critics. Stream On the Beach (1959) online on iFILM.