Australia, 2013, 86 min, English
Production Peter Kaufmann
FALLOUT explores the impulses of novelist Nevil Shute who predicted a nuclear war in his visionary novel On the Beach, and its adaptation by Stanley Kramer into a Hollywood movie. Filmed in Melbourne in 1959, it starred Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. The production was a media circus, the public thrilled at the sight of the stars Ava and Gregory, but it ended in acrimony for Shute and Kramer. Meanwhile the Eisenhower administration, fearing the impact of the reality of nuclear war on the American people, attempted to obstruct the film's production and discredit it on release. FALLOUT pays tribute to Shute's cautionary tale for the potential of nuclear disaster, and the galvanising impact of a terror to which we have now become strangely inured. FALLOUT not only reveals the untold story of ON THE BEACH but also explores the resonance of both the novel and the film in the post Fukushima age as Shute’s prophesy becomes eerily prescient once again...