Film: “On The Beach” 1959

Thursday, September 12^th at 1:30 p.m. Showing of the film “On the Beach” from a book by Neville Shute.  The director, Stanley Kramer, was well-known for releasing message films – like Judgment at Nuremberg.  Of On the Beach he once wrote, “Its subject was as serious and compelling as any ever attempted in a motion picture—the very destruction of mankind and the entire planet.” Kramer died in 2001, but as the Iran nuclear agreement has been cancelled by the Trump administration and the 74^th Anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings make headlines, renewing US-Russian nuclear tensions, his Eisenhower-era movie retains an unfortunate relevance.

The audience take-away. On the Beach, of course, stems from an era when nuclear weapons were primarily in the hands of two world superpowers. Today there seems to be powerful nuclear capability in virtually every global neighborhood. Which makes the message of this novel and this film all the more timely.