On the Beach

In the future year of 1964, World War III has devastated the Northern Hemisphere, killing all humans there. The American nuclear submarine USS Sawfish, commanded by Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), arrives in Melbourne and is placed under Royal Australian Navy command. Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins), a young Australian naval officer with a wife Mary and infant child, is assigned to be Towers' liaison. As the radiation clouds approach, a group of people try to come to terms with their impending doom, including Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner), a lonely alcoholic who develops a tentative attraction with Towers, but he finds himself unable to return her feelings because he cannot bring himself to admit that his wife and children in the United States are dead.