Cinema

The Way the World Ends

By ISABEL QU1GLY ° Theatre.) `THE biggest story of our time,'

g say the posters for On the Beach n (director: Stanley Kramer; 'A'

certificate), and funnily enough

fs..N1o it just about is: not, as you

might suppose, adultery in the bathing huts, but the end of the world; an apocalyptic suliject looked at with an anything but apocalyptic eye. Hardly a jolly outing for Christmas; but not, perhaps, a bad opening for the new decade, since the end of the world is envisaged for 1964 with such deadpan lack of heroics and excitement that you accept it the way you accept any unemotionally presented date when something is going to happen : the year an insur- ance policy will mature or you will be liable for school fees or house-painting. Just that: in 1964 the world ends with a nuclear war, except for Australia, which has five months left to live before the polluted air and sea take over. We are shown the five months of waiting. and the end.

How do people behave when they know till;

end, not just of their individual lives, but of the whole world, is coming at a calculable date just ahead? With this much dignity? One hopes so. With this much lack of speculation? One hopes not. Nevil Shute's novel now filmed shows everyone strictly bounded by the limitations of his life as it has been lived so far; by human ties, affections, ambitions. Does a man really care all that much about winning a car race in the last weeks of the world? Does no one ever wonder what, if anything, happens next? Has no one any scruples about taking the official suicide pill? What about those who won't take it, who avoid the loving pre-prepared death and wait for the physical agony and spiritual loneliness of a few days' survival? On the Beach is carefully neutral, average, unpretentious, almost purposefully in- adequate; it seems to take the view that this is all too big for us to thump our chests and tear our hair about it, so we had better, in the cause of accuracy and authenticity, underplay things like fear and hysteria, exaltation and despair. And in a chilly, limited, strictly British way it rings true. You go out with that slightly below- normal emotional temperature that denotes sho4 for you can just see the people in your stil queueing for the suicide pills for all the flail'

—giving their names politely, shuffling on, unto° ea ful, ordinary and calm.

Chilly, limited and British the whole f°11: Arl remains: British in the way we tend to thing' ourselves rather, perhaps, than in the way we But since what we tend to think of ourselves a particular situation (however limited or c10 our imagination) modifies the way we do,

. fact, behave when the situation turns up, rnil) we should, if the world blew itself to blazes, the catastrophe this way. Maybe social life well carry on more or less as usual till the end; md the commander of a submarine would put t duty to the men first and leave the woman

loved behind (though why, at this stage, couldn't have taken her along too was the civilian thought that kept occurring to r0 maybe no one would panic, rebel against fa' go berserk. But someone would surely pray, tag believe in some future, even wonder? Yet, forl, east its minimising treatment, this remains the bigf story. And not a bad try at the impossible.

Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire and a newcoll called Donna Anderson all give a remarkable ° of authenticity to what they are doing: the yotli couple much in love, the lonely scientist

out of love. The central pair, unfortunately, doe He—the American submarine commander' Gregory Peck; she—the local floosie—A' Gardner. Mr. Peck, of course, and a lot n10 like him, would be around if the world ended four years' time just as surely as interestill abrupt, coiled-spring characters like Perkins Astaire; but somehow he glossies even the id' of it. his face. is too familiar from a do if a pain lover or their current love affair. So they doll has be emotions quite outside the range of her ments match, and, as I say at regular intervals in 0 different, being less an actress than a presen° (lisagre a 'personality': oddly puffy-eyed, she sugge' Far , mediocre situations and plots, he is the film he (se:siecrn3 too consciously, too dully. Ava Gardner is rattl. Whist!, tears, disaster, insomnia, all sorts of anti-gl& the me column, film lovers must match as people befor surveys they are put in a film, else you don't believe. seen in word or a gesture. Still, if you cut out Mr. Pe' gave tis its expression mustn't be coy-making for 1.15 Young which helps to fill out Mr. Shute's rather 0 in its feeling is pretty solid (except for an admit' hieh and his secretary who behave with McCrackell0 Tate and the love he inspires, the rest of the cast 50 luarlartc coyness as the world crumbles about their C3 \\ him —yes, I know, undeclared love may be coy; b° Moven. conception of God, man and the universe. draugm

Limp or no, Mr. Shute and the film man al 'leaved

one thing: they make it all seem personal. HO mously you go out wondering, would I behave? And thi }lagged. do something else, not quite so well but 0 hind hi, quately enough: they make it seem possible the win, don't think most people—average or eccent ith it, —will have faced quite so clearly and un11) mg on 1 sterically the possibility of this end to the wort M the within the next few years. Because eve tue ii

catastrophe happens to other people: we 'S whic never in Frejus or Belsen or Hiroshima. Where0ave

this one happens to everyone and you kn there is no shelter anywhere: no island sra enough, no hole deep enough, no love enfoldtfentire enough, no pathos terrible enough, to escape le queues and the jokes and the understatement r on till the last minute in character : in this se, in national character. Would we? Or would e stuff the last five months, if they were easured out to us, with extraordinary experi- ences; or burn our books and race yelping down Piccadilly? All sorts of fascinating speculations this tame, flat, strange film arouses, and one has a feeling its little local view of all this enormity it not at all wide of the truth.