Amazon.com Essentials:
Stanley Kramer's 1959 antiwar movie looks like everything
Kramer did: subtle as a car wreck but undeniably affecting. Gregory
Peck plays a submarine commander looking for survivors in Australia
after a nuclear holocaust. Ava Gardner is among them and, somewhat
improbably under the circumstances, becomes his love interest. Fred
Astaire and Anthony Perkins are among the characters awaiting death
from the gradual spread of radiation from the north. One might scoff
at Kramer's implicit finger-wagging about nuclear politics in this
mad, mad, mad, mad world, but it is hard to stop watching this
compelling drama all the same. --Tom Keogh
