Anybody remember the 1959 film "On the Beach?"

[PlanetBev]

That’s what the photos of the empty streets around the world remind me of. Really disturbing.

After a nuclear war, everyone and everything either dies of radiation poisoning or commits suicide to avoid it. As the radiation spreads around the world, the last place to go is Australia.

Great film if you’ve never seen it. Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins.

[SoonerPride]

1. I remember it

It was good.

I need to see it again.

[littlemissmartypants]

23. See reply number 21. I posted a link to the full movie. ❤ nt

[Skittles]

2. I read the book.

spooky

[John1956PA]

6. The incidents related in the novel still haunt me decades after reading it. n/t

[yonder]

3. Yes, good movie.

[elleng]

4. Based on‎: ‎On the Beach‎; by ‎Nevil Shute

[SharonAnn]

5. Yes, I got the DVD from Netflix last year.

[Aristus]

7. I thought the film was wrenching.

Then I read the book. I can't remember any other time a book made me cry...

[Chipper Chat]

8. I saw it in 1959 and this is what happened:

At the end if the movie the theatergoers were stunned. People remained motionless in their seats for a while before getting up weak-kneed. That includes me and my two fraternity brothers who were with me. We didn't talk much in the car either.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

16. Thanks for that. Brings back to mind how much additional impact...

some movies can have when you see them in an audience.

I read the novel I forget when. Maybe when in the Navy. Maybe after. Might've even been all the way back in high school.

Saw the movie on VHS, I'm pretty sure it was.

Book and movie were both quite jarring.

[lunatica]

9. I remember it. Gregor Peck starred in it

It was a sad end. In the end they all resigned themselves to dying.

[Demovictory9]

10. yes. was Fred Astaire in it also?

[PlanetBev]

11. Yeah, Fred Astaire played the race car driver

He committed suicide by slamming his race car into a wall.

[Ex Lurker]

13. Nitpick, not that it matters

Astaire was a scientist who drove race cars as a hobby. He accompanied the submarine on an expedition to determine the extent of radiation. When the end became inevitable he participated in a no holds barred daredevil race where many drivers were killed. He survived but later comitted suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in a closed garage with his car.

Totally unrelated: Astaire was a life member of the National Skateboard society. He broke his wrist at age 78 riding his grandson's skateboard.

[tblue37]

12. I read the book but didn't see the movie. nt

[hoosierspud]

14. The book opens with lines from T.S. Elliott's poem

"The Wasteland":
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
With a whimper, not a bang.

[calimary]

20. Welcome to DU, hoosierspud.

Sometimes I find myself wondering if these are apocalyptic times. Certainly seems like we have a strong candidate for the Antichrist right now.

[wnylib]

24. If I believed in such a thing as an antichrist,

it would be Trump without question.

The concerns you and others are feeling now are very similar to what people who lived during the Black Plague wrote about. The first wave of the Plague struck Europe in 1348. I read about it in a very well researched book on the 14th century by historian Barbara Tuckmann.

People thought it was either the Biblical End Times, or a severe punishment from God for evil. Whole monasteries and convents were wiped out due to communal living exposure.. One monk left behind a record of what he saw and experienced. He nursed all the other monks until he was the last one left. At one point he wrote that he doubted anyone would live to read his records, but he wrote them in case "any of the race of man should live to read this."

The record ends mid sentence when he presumably succumbed to the Plague, too.

But, there were survivors and life did continue, though greatly changed. And that's how it will be with us. There will be more waves before it runs out. Life will not be the same when it's over.

[calimary]

28. Yep. That's fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

I remember reading about it in history classes. The Black Plague. Also known as the Black Death. And people were changed. Society was changed. The whole "our way of life" thing was changed. Had to.

I've got 14 years of Catholic school informing my "Wonder years" so that's the filter in the picture for me here. (Amazing how powerful stuff like that still is... )

I can't help but gravitate toward the "who's the Antichrist" questions. And yet Scriptural Studies classes also got to the part that said "no one will know the hour" of the dreaded end times.

Weird, I know. But it's been in the back of my mind since trump came to power.

[wnylib]

29. I think we'll see some permanently changed

ways of doing things, just as happened after the Plague. I expect to see work and school studies done online much more often in the future. People in service jobs who are keeping society functioning right now will demand more money and respect for their roles and risk taking., e.g. supermarket cashiers, truck drivers, EMTs, people who clean and sanitize public buildings. Not to mention nurses, orderlies, doctors.

So I don't see this as an apocalyptic end times, just the end of one way of life and the start of some big changes, due to changing times, as has happened many times before in human history..

My religious upbringing was mainstream Protestant. The church did not emphasize End Times prophecies beyond what Jesus said in the Gospels. Nothing on the book of Revelations except to tell us in Sunday School that it was written during a time of great risk to be a follower of Jesus, so it contains metaphorical references and descriptions, like a code, that contemporaries understood, but that are not decipherable to most modern people. We were taught that people who try to interpret it today are usually off base and should not try.

So I don't take apocalyptic prophesies or concern about an Antichrist very seriously.

[calimary]

33. I probably shouldn't, either.

I guess trump just brings that out in me. The thought just started coming to mind every time I looked at him.

[Dan]

15. Hell saw it, a few years later

we almost lived it - during the Cuban Missile Crisis!

[yaesu]

17. I watched it last summer, great film. nt

[LastDemocratInSC]

18. I was young but I remember the book and the movie.

[winstars]

19. I have been thinking about this film EVERY SINGLE DAY for weeks if not months!!!!

[littlemissmartypants]

21. On the Beach, Full Movie 1:51:46

[SoonerPride]

27. Oh wow!! Thank you !

This is great.

[littlemissmartypants]

32. You're welcome, SoonerPride. ❤ nt

[wnylib]

22. I read the book in 1962 when I was 12.

The time setting for the book is1963. In late 1962 (mid to end of October), the Cuban Missle Crisis occurred, with its very real threat of nuclear war. I turned 13 during the crisis. Thought I'd never see 14.

Saw the movie a few years later on TV. I thought of those scenes from the movie recently.

[spiderpig]

25. I can't hear "Waltzing Matilda" without thinking of that film.

The remake with Armand Assante and Rachel Ward was good too. (Although equally depressing and heart-wrenching.)

[Brother Mythos]

26. I remember it.

But, I haven't seen it on any of the old movie channels in quite some time.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

30. trump is the Coke bottle caught in the window shade

[kairos12]

31. I remember

reading the book.