on the beach
Was an item I had trouble finding, and it was a gift and never thought I would have it on time but it was delivered very quickly and I had it before I needed it.

Not with a Bang but a Whimper
There is almost too much that can be said about this splendid and poignant film. On the Beach deals more with the tagedy of people's inevitable deaths than with the nuclear holocaust that causes it.
We are treated to a love story in Beach with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardener which is doomed from the start by the human annialation about
to envelope the last group of humanity living on the planet. I loved Fred Astaire's performance as a nuclear scientist and race car enthusiast and also by Anthony Perkins role as a naval officer and married man with a new-born daughter. No one will survive. to Quote T.S. Eliot, " This is the way the world ends, not with a Bang but a Whimper....." The "Bang" has been nuclear war, leaving only the whimper of total human extinction. The musical score of Waltzing Matilda sounds like a funeral dirge and is the poignant theme of On The Beach.....Sad.

On the Boring Side
This movie was SO DISAPPOINTING!! Ava Gardner was irritating with her lack of acting skills. Gregory Peck was not convincing as a smitten man. In fact, he must not have been smitten not to have stayed to be with her at the very end. There was no chemistry between them. I thought Anthony Perkins was weird as a newlywed. The production values and writing were poor. Very sorry I bought this.

DON'T READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN MOVIE OR READ BOOK
I won't repeat all the points others have made, just will point out a few observations. In my 58 years I never managed to read the book or see the movie. I picked up the book at a thrift store a couple of weeks ago and then started reading. I found it extremely slow and wordy. Then after I was 3/4 of the way through it, I was watching TV, and the movie version came on! Even though it was midnight, I watched it, and then finished the book. I thought the movie was a lot better than the book since it eliminated much of the unnecessary details and dialogue. What made the movie hard to forget were two scenes which were not in the book: The Salvation-Army type band that played in the crowded town square with the banner overhead reading, "There Is Still Time, Brother", meaning, time to get right with God before you die. Then at the very end of the movie, the camera follows the blowing newspapers through the empty streets, and winds up at the same square, now barren of people. The camera again focuses on the banner, "There Is Still Time, Brother" - a brilliant stroke by the director, meaning, there is still time FOR US to do something about nuclear bombs! Awesome! This movie must have had a lot to do with the ban-the-bomb movement and was therefore extremely influential. Those words still ring in my mind. "There is still time, brother" for both getting right with God and, praying to keep peace in the world.

Product of the times, as bad as they were
One of the strangest, most disjunct, dully polemical and just plain bad films to come out of the period. It's as if 3 movies were put in a blender and whipped together: tiresome distopian polemic, love story and submarine epic. How anybody could call Kramer's directing to be brilliant is a total mystery to me. About as subtle as being hit over the head. Ava Gardner looks dissipated and everyone seems to be sleepwalking. The sets are weirdly sanitized, and not one corpse is ever seen, leading you to believe that perhaps everybody just went on vacation and didn't bother to tell the Navy.