Midnight at the oasis… On the Beach (1959), BFI Blu-ray out 27th July!

 

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river…

 

TS Eliot, The Hollow Man (1925)

 

In 1959 the Doomsday Clock, established in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to symbolize the threat of nuclear war, stood at seven minutes to midnight. In 2026 it is just 85 seconds… the closest ever. So, any attempt to review this film as a “period piece” is undermined by proliferation and the persistent threat of global conflict involving weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

I hadn't previously seen On the Beach, it sounds like an upbeat Cliff Richard musical with that title, but this is a Stanley Kramer film and it could well be one of the most sobering ever made as the remnants of humanity await the drift of the nuclear radiation down south to Australia. Yet, even in the face of almost certain doom, there are new tales to tell and moments of humanity, and warmth. It’s no longer that hard to place ourselves in the mindset of 1959 when the Cold War was in full freeze and nuclear stockpiles were already big enough for mutually assured destruction. Growing up through the end of the Cold War we had every expectation that The Bomb would slowly be defused… but there you go.

 

Directed by Kramer, sandwiched between The Defiant Ones (1958) and Inherit the Wind (1960) this is another in his string of films addressing topics Hollywood normally avoids. Adapted by John Paxton from the novel of the same name by Australian writer Nevil Shute, it is an unflinchingly clear view of what course human history could take just over a decade after the World war which followed on from the War to End All Wars two decades before. It wasn’t such an unreasoned expectation that conflicts were inevitable even if the costs were to be so great and so universally unavoidable. We never learn.

Gregory Peck

It begins on a submarine, an illusion of safety among the routine, under the auspices of Commander Dwight Lionel Towers played by Gregory Peck, whose Mount Rushmore visage of wisdom and pained humanity opens in concerned close up, scanning the seas for signs of life. They are heading south to Melbourne, the last survivors of the US Navy which, like most of the planet has fallen under a hail of nuclear weapons in a conflagration that is not explained but which is still ongoing. The radiation of the war is mostly in the Northern hemisphere but it is slowly being carried towards them… some months away.

 

The film gives us a scenario of slight hope with the submarine being sent north to investigate the distribution of the radiation cloud, which according to the theory, may be dispersing more quickly than at first thought leaving the possibility of inhabitable land. At the same time, a series of morse code signals are received from San Diego… is it possible that another group has managed to survive?

 

In Melbourne though, life continues almost as normal with the only real difference being the lack of gasoline and the city full of cyclists, electric trams and horses. One of the local naval officers, Lieutenant Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) is assigned to the Americans. He’s a family man whose wife Mary (Donna Anderson) is in denial about their limited future and who can blame her with a small child to protect.

 

Melbourne after the fall

As Towers arrives he is met at the station by Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) who instantly catches his eye – as Ava Gardner is apt to do… - although he is living as a man whose wife and children are somehow still alive back in America. There’s also a British scientist, Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire) who drinks too much mourning his involvement in the nuclear programme and knowing exactly what is coming. Both Gardner and Astaire are magnificent and give quite possibly some of their finest performances in the mid/late careers, freed of the lightness of much of the material they had to work with in this time. Both also have important roles to play in showing that there is new life and new love even in the direst of circumstances as Julian rebuilds a Ferrari racing car, winning a race that whilst it has a few too many crashes to be anything other than “a ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines…”, does allow him one last hurrah. Peck is excellent of course as convincing as ever as a man of duty and dignity who will follow his course no matter what the personal cost.

 

He and Ava get to bring new romance to the final laps of humanity as Moira and Towers get close as the reality of his situation finally sets him free. But, for how long. The local authorities have dispensed suicide pills to be used when the options are a slow death by radiation or nothing… Peter and Mary have the hardest journey to take with their child, once the future now requiring a desperate choice. Perkins is at his most sympathetic and young Donna Anderson acquits herself well.

 

As the congregation outside the church starts to dimmish with the coming of the summer winds, the banner reads that “there is still time Brother…”

 

Fred Astaire, Donna Anderson and Anthony Perkins watch a yacht race on the beach

Scott Harrison, in one of two new commentaries, points out the title is taken the verse at the top from TS Elliott’s poem The Hollow Man. These beach is terminal* which presents a desolate landscape and a state of moral destitution “it is not about hope or optimism but about when we chose to give in to the inevitable and how we chose to live under a death sentence. It may even – as the book – be about suicide. Most of all though, it is a warning and one that stands to this day.

 

We still have this capacity to destroy whilst at the same time are plunging the planet into a slow hot death with fossil fuels… this is the science fiction of probabilities, a warning we have still to head and the circumstances of which have only worsened over this new century. In this respect, we are all Mary…

 

 

Anthony and Donna

Special features:

 

Presented in High Definition

Audio commentary written by Dr Philip Davey, author of When Hollywood Came to Melbourne

Newly commissioned audio commentary by Scott Harrison

Making On the Beach (1959, 9 mins): rare 8mm footage shot by amateur filmmaker Richard Goslin

Interview with Donna Anderson (2015, 19 mins): the actor discusses her time working with the cast and crew of On the Beach

Kim Newman on Apocalypse Cinema (2022, 22 mins): the film critic deconstructs On the Beach and discusses the socio-political environment in which the film emerged

Clothes to Die For: The Costumes of Ava Gardner (2022, 16 mins): costume historian Elissa Rose explores Ava Gardner’s impressive wardrobe in the film

A Tribute to Stanley Kramer (2004, 14 mins): a celebration of Stanley Kramer’s life and career, featuring interviews with screenwriter Abby Mann and Karen Sharpe, Kramer’s widow

Operation Hurricane (1952, 33 mins): after the first Soviet atomic weapon was detonated in 1949, the British accelerated the development of their own nuclear deterrent. This haunting film documents the first atom bomb test on the Monte Bello Islands

Original theatrical trailer and galleries

 

Fred on form

For the first pressing only there’s also an illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Dr Christina Brennan and Barry Forshaw and a biography of Stanley Kramer by Jennifer Frost. Also includes writing on Operation Hurricane by the BFI’s Vic Pratt, notes on the special features and film credits

 

In his commentary Scott Harrison reads out the most pertinent and the most well-known closing section of Eliot’s poem, which aptly describes the fate of these last few survivors. At the time one of the reviews has noted that perhaps On the Beach could be the film that “saves the World” … well, it’s getting its second chance now thanks to this excellent release.

 

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

TS Eliot, The Hollow Man (1925)

 

You can order direct from the BFI Shop in person or online and from all good retailers of home cinema. Poignant, terrifying and sobering.

 

 

*JG Ballard’s Terminal Beach (1964), a short story based on a man’s physical and mental deterioration on a nuclear testing site, may or may not have been inspired by this film. There was something in the air and the World came very close with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962… ever closer to midnight.

All for Ava… Tam-Lin (1970), BFI Flipside 45, Blu-ray out now

If there’s any film that personifies the concept of cult cinema it’s this one, Roddy McDowall’s sole directorial effort and one that took decades to emerge fully realised thanks to Roddy’s pal Martin Scorsese who helped in the restoration of its reputation and content in the late 1990s. Before that, a film begun on 7^th July 1969, according to McDowall, although his biographer David Del Valle says here it was 1967, but only distributed in a truncated form in late 1970 in the UK and 1972 in the US, by which time, as Stephanie Beacham says in her extras interview, fashions had changed and the film’s Swinging London vibe was no longer in vogue as the grittier, jaded and disappointed seventies unrolled.

 

Variously entitled Tam-Lin, Tom Lin, The Devil's Widow and The Devil's Woman… there’s genuine strangeness and charm about this film that is more genuinely unsettling than most outright horror films of the period and there are performances to relish especially from Ava Gardner, the most insecure of Hollywood royalty, a woman somehow trapped within expectations and her own extreme beauty according to McDowall. Del Valle says the film was made for Gardner but McDowall originally had his good friend Elizabeth Taylor in mind, casting Ava, who was based in the UK and, of course, another of his friends. From that point he certainly did create this film for her and, as noted by Madeline Smith in her interview, the two would often be in quite conference off camera as he coached her sensational starlight to full beam.

 

Ian and Ava

Smith says McDowall to also whisper instructions to his players, fully aware of the shyness that she notes seems to debilitate many creative characters. By all accounts here he was a sensitive director who made the set a relaxed experience so that people could express themselves; having been in films since the age of ten, Roddy knew the business inside out as well as the personalities. Here he also shows great understanding of narrative efficiency and is confident enough to take risks such as shifting to a mix of still shots when his two lovers meet and truly connect over a babbling brook: there’s surprise, fear, longing and love all communicated in a seconds… it could be corny but it works and that you could say about much of this film. As McDowall says in an introduction, he gave for the home media debut of his film in 1998, he was lucky to have high-quality collaborators. Yes Roddy, but you also led the team.

 

Again Tam-Lin meets the definition of a cult film as there are many such stories of the passion involved in its making, all of which makes its as having been overlooked a mystery until, like so many such films, you look at the production problems; the original company went bust only for American International Pictures to buy it up and decide it should be a different film… cutting it from and artful A to a “folk horror” or “hagsploitation” (Del Valle’s term) B-movie.

 

Ava Gardner was a hard-living 47 at the time, but still Ava Gardner.

On this BFI Blu-ray, Tam-Lin gets its first release in the UK and is fully revealed as a love story in every way, on and behind the screen, and one that examines the loneliness of the rich powerful woman Michaela Cazaret (Gardner) who exerts an hypnotic control over her various acolytes, young men and women who just want to live for the moment and with no responsibility. The “coven” may or may not be under the spell of Michaela, who is analogous to the Fairy Queen in the original poem, but they are just as enchanted and, as in the poem help to keep her young.

 

Her parasitic affection for these folk is transcended by her affection for Tom Lynn (Ian McShane) who is bold and honest, loving her but still capable of independence. McShane says it was a difficult role to play as he had to be a protagonist with some agency and yet one around whom everything happened. Now he’s not sure his portrayal always works but that’s been overly critical, he gives an energetic display, has great chemistry with Gardner and is believably heroic but conflicted.

 

Stephanie Beacham praises too whilst describing McShane as a “naughty boy, playing a naughty boy…” that’s Yorkshire for cheeky I believe – it’s easy to forget how young some of these actors where and this was her first film as Janet Ainsley, the vicar’s daughter who bonds so deeply with Tom. She says she may have been cast as she was spotted in the street turning heads whilst oblivious to her effect. This may or may not be true but Madeline Smith was similarly cast, after being spotted on the street for two productions though not for this film, her first as a member of Equity.

 

Stephanie Beacham and friend

The film begins in London with Michaela and Tom leaving the comforts of their conjugal bed to lead their mobile party to their cars in preparation for a journey to Scotland. They look to be in Knightsbridge or somewhere similar and the cars include a Rolls Royce, Bentley, a Jensen and an Aston Martin DBS – all classic cars but wait till you see the Morris Minor estate driven by Janet.

 

Once in Michaela’s immense Scottish castle (Traquair House in Peeblesshire, Scotland’s oldest lived-in house once used by the Stuarts) they settle down to the business of having a good time… Georgia (Joanna Lumley) reads books and makes broad philosophical statements, Rose (Sinéad Cusack) plays with Tarot cards, whilst Caroline (Jenny Hanley) plays Frisbee with the boys and the unsettlingly childlike Sue (Madeline Smith) asks for a puppy. It’s the cream of 1970’s British acting starlets, with more to come…

 

One young man Alan (Bruce Robinson later to write and direct Withnail and I) is desperate to speak to Michaela but she casts him aside… once you’re out you are out and “you can always die…” as she says to the sad wreck. More sturdy is Oliver (David Whitman) who is second only to Tom in the hierarchy of the coven… biding his time for the chance to be held in deeper affection by his mistress.

 

Don't mess with Richard Watiss

Michaela’s “assistant” Elroy, played superbly against type by Richard Wattis, is the longest lasting of her associates. He’s the man who covers her “administration” and does everything necessary to keep her in the manner she wants, he is all seeing and misses nothing, ruthless in the execution of her whims.

 

Into all this hedonistic unreality arrives Janet, the daughter of Vicar Julian Ainsley (Sinéad’s amazing Dad, Cyril Cusack), bringing a puppy for sale to Sue. She has an immediate connection to Tom and aversion to Sue, before Michaela, always so commanding and reasonable, offers to make sure the dog is taken care of. Cheekily Janet asks for £50 for the dog, a challenge smilingly met by Michaela with Elroy telling her she’s a “silly girl” when paying her off.

 

But this is to be the least of the household’s problems as Janet and Tom meet and consummate their love and the course of conflict is now clearly set as Michaela sensing Tom’s emerging new love, wonders how to keep hold of him… everything is set for a frenetic and unexpectedly psychedelic battle for independence, life and love.

 

Spot the future stars: Madeline Smith and Joanna Lumley plus friends

The original ballad dates to as early as 1549 and has evolved into many forms as young Tam, under the protection of the Queen of the Fairies has to be rescued from her vengeful sacrifice by a young woman who has stolen his heart.

 

The score was written by the esteemed Stanley Myers with extensive contributions from Pentangle – a folk super-group featuring Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thomson, Jacqui McShee and Terry Cox. It’s possible that McDowall came across the story through its popularity in the sixties folk boom in London; from trailblazer Anne Briggs wispily mystical performances of Young Tambling through to Fairport Convention’s more muscular Tam Lin from 1969’s Liege and Leif, the story was sung again through the taverns and hipster coffee houses of London and beyond.

 

Jacqui McShee is interviewed on the extras and she remembers Roddy and Ava turning up for their recording at Olympic Studios where the actress lay down on the studio floor to watch Danny Thomson playing his upright bass. McShee was also coaxed into a very clearly enunciated performance as the American producers couldn’t follow her accent. The results are still outstanding with Pentangle’s mix of folk and jazz producing a magic of their own. Such rare grooves being yet another attribute for a cult movie.

  

Traquair House

The special features are, as always, very special:

 

• Audio commentary by BFI Flipside co-founders William Fowler and Vic Pratt (2021) 
• Love You and Leave You for Dead (2021): Ian McShane on Tam Lin
• An Eerie Tale to Tell (2021): Stephanie Beacham on Tam Lin
• Ballad of a B-Movie: Revisiting Tam Lin (2021): interview with Roddy McDowall biographer David Del Valle
• Legendary Ladies of the Silver Screen: Ava Gardner (1998): Roddy McDowall remembers Ava Gardner and Tam Lin
• Adventures Along the Way (2022): actress Madeline Smith looks back on being one of the coven
• Listening In (2022): Jacqui McShee, lead singer of  Pentangle, recalls the writing and recording of the film’s cult soundtrack
• Hans Zimmer on Stanley Myers (2021): the composer discusses the work of Stanley Myers
• Red Red? Red (Jim Weiss, Chris Maudson, John Phillips, 1971): an impressionistic study of a commune in Devon...
• Border Country - rare short films from the BFI National Archive reveal rural lifestyles at Scotland’s edge
• Theatrical trailer
• Illustrated booklet* with a new essay on the film by the BFI’s William Fowler, essays by Sam Dunn and Corinna Reicher, a contemporary review by Tom Milne from Monthly Film Bulletin and notes on the special features and credits.

 

You can order Tam-Lin direct from the BFI online shop or visit in person, it’s one of the best releases in the Flipside series and that is really saying something! * This is for the initial pressing only, so be quick!

 

Also, if you want to see the film on the big screen it’s showing at the Rio Cinema, Dalston, London on Monday 31^st October with special guests Ian McShane interviewed by Stewart Lee… that’ll be a Q&A to remember. Tickets and details on their website.

The moving finger writes… Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

A wispy dream of a film, Albert Lewin’s labour about love has a cracking start full of intrigue, invention and fragile mortality.

It begins with a portentous quote from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: "The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

The villagers crowd to view the tragedy

A Spanish fishing boat has uncovered something terrible and we see the villagers of Esperanza  running across the beach from all directions as the camera pans outwards through a tolling bell on a high tower and revealing a young woman looking down in horror through a telescope on a platform way above the shore. It’s a great set-piece and seems to have been improvised largely around the location as found.

Amidst the distress that follows we learn that one of the two dead was known and loved very well by the local expats - a mix of archaeologists, drunks and speed racers – and is an American singer called Pandora…

There goes the fourth wall...

The owner of the house on the hill is Professor Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender) and, as he mulls over the tragedy, he turns startlingly to face the viewer and starts telling the whole tale... The distant sound of gypsy music increases in volume and is revealed as the Professor's memory of a local group performing before the expats. The gypsies are everything the Brits are not, passionate and  true to themselves, they play and dance with abandon... a foretaste of what is to come.

Now that's a pasodoble!

Pulling back from the gypsy dancing, we soon see Pandora languidly dazzling all around her one of whom (Marius Goring) is drinking himself to death over her. After asking her one more time if she will marry him he drinks the poison he has popped in his wine glass and drops dead in front of her.

Almost unmoved by this inevitable waste of a miss-guided life, Pandora simply walks off.

Ava Gardner

The next day at the Professor's home, Pandora ignores the facile grieving and sets her sights on Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) a British land speed record driver who may have been dating the Professor’s niece Janet (Liverpool’s own Sheila Sim). Yet even the professor admires her directness and her honesty… perhaps the younger men are too distracted by her beauty: too sexually acquisitive?

She drives off with Nigel in his racing car – his pride and joy – and, stunningly, asks him if he would push it over the cliff in order to prove his love to her. This is duly does and there’s some marvellous shots of Pandora throwing her head back in ecstasy as the machine falls to the sea behind her.

Pandora is impressed by sacrifice

This is then followed by a strangely impressive shot of Pandora’s profile – huge in the foreground – whilst Nigel stands small, trying to make sense of what he has just done.

Man Ray is rumoured to have worked on the film and such moments might reflect such input but, then again, the cinematography is from Jack Cardiff fresh from his triumphs on The Red Shoes. This is a sumptuous-looking film and – allowing for some deterioration even on the restored Blu-Ray – must have looked stunning on the big screen.

Pandora swims out

Mere moments after having agreed to marry Nigel, Pandora becomes fascinated by the boat in the bay and swims out to investigate… she arrives to find an almost empty ship with a single occupant, painting a portrait of a woman who looks uncannily like herself.

Pandora is shocked when she meets this strange man – a look of recognition or of love? She tries to regain her stride but she has been shaken to the core.

At first sight...

The man is revealed to be Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason) a Dutch sailor who hides a rather substantial secret…

It’s from this point that the film begins to lose some of that early energy as the viewer calculates the ways in which things will play out. Yet the chemistry between the simply gorgeous Gardner and the manly Mason is good and both act exceptionally well – blasting pretty much everyone else off-screen (such a shame Goring got “injured” so early on…)

The genuinely great, James Mason

Gradually the mystery is revealed as Hendrick becomes involved in local society. He translates a sixteenth century journal for Fielding who begins to realise that his translator is also, incredibly the author… Can it be that this is the same man?

I won’t give much away as this story relies so much on mystery and anticipation to work.

Bull fighting and car racing... the men compete

But there’s a long way to run as a famous bullfighter Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré), returns to his home town and sets himself on winning back Pandora. There’s a dangerous sporting stand-off between him and Nigel who breaks the land speed record in a sequence filmed in Pendine, South Wales (I’d recognise that long, flat beach anywhere!). Juan responds by fighting bulls and getting cross.

But who will Pandora chose…

The film is a stylistic delight and strangely charming… OK the story may be fantastic but then isn’t that what we want? It’s a more spiritually straightforward counter-point to A Matter of Life and Death at a time when audiences still needed to believe that there’s more to life than death… and we haven’t changed that much.

Ava Gardner

I hadn't really watched Gardner properly before and she is indeed very beautiful... perfectly cast as a Pandora every bit as mythical as the Dutchman: the two eternally destined to be together or not at all.

Watch it and be entranced by Gardner and Mason and to marvel at a fantasy that is ultimately disarmingly frank. As Professor Fielding says: "the measure of love is how much you are willing to sacrifice for it" and there's simply no easy answer to that.

It’s available here in a fine new Blu-Ray/DVD combo.

John Laurie's in it too!

Pendine Beach in South Wales, home of the World land speed record once upon a time.