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Nuclear Holocaust fiction was hardly a subject that the major Hollywood studios were eager to engage with. This would not be surprising as this would likely result in box office failure and was too politically and socially contentious to handle in the first place. However, in the early 1950s the subject was first brought to the screen in the micro budget form of Five in 1951. In this obscure story only five people survived the nuclear war, three white men, one white woman, and a black man. All converge on a house that had belonged to Roseanne’s grandmother (the white woman played by Susan Douglas Rubes).
True to form, even though they are the only survivors, major personality conflicts arise and they are unable to cooperate for the greater good. The general critical consensus pointed out the bad acting, tedious pace of the story, lack of imagination and illogical details in the script regarding what circumstances would be like in a post-nuclear war world. I wasn’t delighted with Five for all the above reasons, but everyone has to decide what they should watch or not, and come to their own conclusions. On the opposite end of the scale we have On The Beach (1959). In this account World War Three has devastated most of our planet, but Melbourne, Australia far down in the Southern Hemisphere is the one major holdout.
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Although the city was spared physical obliteration, the radioactive fallout is slowly making its way down to southeastern Australia as well. It’s only a matter of time before all life there will also be extinguished. The film was adapted from the well-received 1957 novel of the same name by British author Nevil Shute, but the book and film differ on some aspects of plot and the ending of the book is more graphically depressing. However, unlike Five the production values and cast of On The Beach are first rate (including Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, & Anthony Perkins). It was directed by Stanley Kramer who was acclaimed for his socially conscious dramas (much like John Frankenheimer mentioned in Part 1 of this series) tackling uncomfortable material that the major Hollywood studios often shied away from.
In the film version of On The Beach the most absorbing aspect of the plot to me concerns Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) the commander of a lone surviving nuclear submarine traveling from Australia fruitlessly across the Pacific Rim trying to find out where a Morse code single is tapping out relentlessly. It seems to be coming from somewhere on the west coast of the United States, but this is puzzling to the subs crew as all of the U.S. is believed to be wiped out. What they actually find was sadly prosaic but unexpected and astonishing at the same time. Of course, as I state in previous posts about movies, an important plot point will not be spoiled here for those who haven’t seen it.
The other important characters include Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson as a young couple with a new baby who have no future to look forward to, Fred Astaire as a nuclear scientist who helped develop the bombs and Ava Gardner as a Melbourne socialite struggling with alcohol issues. She is in love with Captain Towers, but he is unable to return those feelings clinging to the irrational hope that his family has somehow survived the war and waiting for him somewhere within the shattered U.S. After watching On The Beach three times I cannot help but think how amazing it is for humanity (and obviously all other life forms) to have proven so resilient throughout many centuries of catastrophes.
We’ve managed to be durable through one major historical trauma after another: diseases, pestilences, famines, natural disasters, wars and so forth. With that said, we have to seriously consider whether or not this will continue to be the case. A Nuclear Holocaust is NOT going to be like any other major challenge we have ever confronted and had to recover from. This event would truly be the end of everything. There would be no foundation of any sort to rebuild upon and nobody left to rebuild it! This also brings me to briefly discuss two other films about nuclear annihilation. These are both from the 1980s and like On The Beach should be viewed as extreme cautionary tales.
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The first one is Testament (1983) originally created by PBS, but was later released theatrically. It concerns a family living in a small town north of San Francisco which has been obliterated in a nuclear attack. This bleak story depicts how the survivors in the small town of Hamelin try to continue life with some semblance of normalcy. This cannot continue, though, as winds carry the radioactive fallout to town — an ominous sign of worse things to come. As more and people succumb to radiation poisoning Hamelin moves rapidly into physical and social disintegration.
In a similar vein and also from 1983 ABC-TV premiered The Day After which displays the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse in more graphic and gruesome terms than either On The Beach or Testament. This narrative centers on the Kansas City, Missouri region which was a major target area in the US/NATO alliance nuclear aggression with Soviet Russia and its allies. Around the Kansas City area hundreds of thousands are incinerated instantly, but the story follows some survivors as they try to cope with this new, horrific reality. The scope of the destruction is dreadful.
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The National Guard is executing looters, ragged trails of refugees are pointlessly milling around, hospitals become overwhelmed by survivors struggling with radiation poisoning, supplies of food, water, and medical supplies are dwindling rapidly amidst the general chaos. Despite all of this, The Day After added a disclaimer before the final credits stating that the real-life effects of nuclear war would be far worse than any fictional account could depict. If these three movies couldn’t move viewers to tears…then I don’t know what else could. In any case, it astounds me that there is virtually no public discourse about this vital concern when we are currently living in such a militarily charged and politically volatile climate worldwide.
