Stanley Kramer's film adaptation of Nevil Shute's doomsday novel was released at the time when people across the US and Europe were marching for nuclear disarmament. It all looks rather melodramatic now, but at the time its bleak message really hit home. The story, set in 1964 after the nuclear destruction of the Northern Hemisphere, centres on the arrival in Melbourne of a US submarine, captained by Gregory Peck. In Australia, society is beginning to disintegrate as people face the inevitable nuclear fallout: we follow the fates of Peck, conscience-stricken scientist Fred Astaire (in his first dramatic role), married couple Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson, and good-time girl Ava Gardner, as Peck's sub goes on a mission to investigate a faint radio signal coming from California... The acting is, with one or two exceptions, credible, but it's Giuseppe Rotunno's photography that stays in the mind, brilliantly communicating the eeriness of a deserted world.

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