The 1959 sci-fi movie Ridley Scott needs everyone to see: “If you haven’t seen it, watch it”
Ridley Scott might have a name that sounds like a movie villain, but most antagonists in his films are anything but human, featuring replicants, aliens and androids.
It’s safe to say that he knows a thing or two about science fiction, as he delivered a seminal entry to the genre in 1979 with Alien, blending horror and sci-fi to create a terrifying tale of human versus other, something dangerous, uncertain, essentially offering a slasher-esque thriller set in space.
Alien would become a huge success, but Scott was no one-hit wonder. It wouldn’t be long before his reign over modern sci-fi continued with his classic 1982 film Blade Runner, a movie that has always felt incredibly ahead of its time, what with its exploration of artificial intelligence and the merging of human and machine.
While the filmmaker has gone on to other projects, with historical epics such as Gladiator, action movies like GI Jane, and biopics like Napoleon, it seems like he just can’t stop himself from returning to that ever-captivating landscape of science fiction, where, rather ironically, the deepest truths about humanity are so often revealed.
Rather surprisingly, Scott once admitted that he was never all that into the genre when he was younger, telling Entertainment Weekly, “There was one or two that I thought were OK and I could describe as being interesting.”
Besides the life-changing experience of watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, one of the most important sci-fi experiences of Scott’s life came when he was in his early 20s, and he saw a movie that perhaps doesn’t get as much attention these days as he believes it deserves.
He explained, “The one I think is probably the best to watch, funny enough, is called On the Beach. Nevil Shute did a great book which was made into a very, very good movie. Even now it works, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. It’s really fundamentally about where we could be in a year if we don’t watch it, which is fundamentally about post-atomic warfare, where the only place left untouched by the cloud is Australia. It all takes place in Australia.”
Directed by Stanley Kramer, the film also featured big names like Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins, and depicted the terrifying prospect of a world where the entire Northern Hemisphere has been wiped out by World War III. It felt strangely imminent in the 1950s, with plenty of anxiety regarding nuclear warfare amid the Cold War, and sadly, it’s still relevant today, with Scott advising, “If you haven’t seen it, watch it. It’s great”.
The movie won a few awards, such as the ‘United Nations Award’ at the Baftas, but On the Beach received mixed reviews from critics, and it’s not one of Peck’s or Gardner’s best remembered films. Perhaps it’s one that people haven’t come back to as much as they should, solely because it presents a terrifying vision of the world that is a little too real.
