On the Beach Blu-ray

'On the Beach' Director: Stanley Kramer (1959) BFI Blu-ray 

Widely considered the first ‘important’ entry in the doomsday genre, and based on Nevil Shute’s novel, On the Beach is set in 1964 when virtually all life on earth has been exterminated by the radioactive residue of a nuclear war. Only those survivors now in Australia have been spared – but it seems only a matter of time before they too succumb to the spreading radiation cloud. 

As they await their fate, people react in wildly different ways. Some embark on a non-stop binge of revelry, while others consider the suicide pills being offered by the government. Against this backdrop, faint radio signals emanating from San Diego appear to offer a ray of hope, and one submarine commander and his men embark on a voyage to discover whether life clings on elsewhere on Earth.

Starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins.

Special features include:

• **FIRST PRESSING ONLY** 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
  
• Audio commentary written by Dr Philip Davey, author of When Hollywood Came to Melbourne
• 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
• Film critic Kim Newman on apocalypse cinema
• Costume historian Elissa Rose explores Ava Gardner’s impressive wardrobe as worn in On the Beach 
• Tribute to Stanley Kramer, 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 
• Stanley Kramer’s photo album