On the Beach (1959 film)

On the Beach is a 1959 American black-and-white post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film from United Artists, produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the same name depicting a nuclear war and its aftermath. Unlike the novel, no blame is placed on whoever started the war; it is hinted in the film that the threat of annihilation may have arisen from an accident (for example, a fault in a few vacuum tubes or transistor circuits, as in the similarly themed 1964 film Fail-Safe).