The Atomic Cafe (1982)
DOCUMENTARY ON VIEWS ABOUT ATOM BOMB
''ONE of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man'' is the way one enthusiastic United States Army chaplain describes the detonation of an atomic bomb, an event about to be witnessed for the first time by his men in the Nevada desert.
Burt the Turtle, a cheerful cartoon character in a training film for children, demonstrates how he ducks and safely covers himself inside his shell whenever a firecracker explodes nearby - in this way to train children to crawl under their desks and hide their eyes as soon as they see the bright light of an A-blast.
In another training film Mr. Average Man goes to a doctor who diagnoses the patient's illness as ''nuclearosis,'' the symptoms of which are undue worry about nuclear war. After all, the doctor points out, using appropriate charts, it is absurd that 85 percent of the population should be so fearful when only 15 percent would be killed in an all-out nuclear war.
On the soundtrack we hear ''Atomic Power'' by the Buchanan Brothers, ''Uranium'' by the Commodores, ''Atomic Love'' by Little Caesar, plus other rock-and-roll, blues, country and gospel numbers that were the way this nation's music industry responded to the dawn of the atomic era in the late 1940's and 50's.
These are some of the components of ''The Atomic Cafe,'' a devastating collage-film that examines official and unofficial United States attitudes toward the atomic age in the years immediately after World War II. The film, which opens today at the Film Forum and deserves national attention, begins with the first successful A-test at Alamogordo, N.M., and goes on to include President Harry S Truman's triumphant announcement of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, when he pledges that the weapon will be used ''in His ways and to His purposes.''
After two radio comedians make jokes about Hiroshima - ''It looked like Ebbetts Field after a doubleheader with the Giants'' - we see newsreels of Hiroshima survivors. United States public figures are confident that God gave the bomb to Americans because Americans love democracy, until the Soviet Union detonates its own bomb. A Southern California shopping-center owner sponsors a nuclear defense drill because ''shopping centers are an expression of the free world.''
We witness the United States Navy relocating ''the friendly natives'' of Bikini atoll in preparation for further bomb-testing, hear a Congressman call for the use of the bomb during the Korean War, and watch - again in a Government training film - the members of a happy, middle-class American family repairing to their bomb shelter fitted with a periscope.
Two plump school girls proudly if self-consciously display the bomb-shelter provisions they made in their home-economics class: a dozen one-quart Mason jars filled with dehydrated potatoes, deyhdrated milk, vegetables and dried fruit.
One gets the impression from all of these propaganda films that we should anticipate nuclear war as inconvenient but fun, like being snowed in on the farm for a weekend.
Or, to paraphrase the philosophy expressed in song in a Walt Disney film, ''Nothing is so awful that wishing won't make it seem not so bad.''
It is clear that Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty, who spent five years gathering material for this film, believe that even if the detonation of an A-bomb is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man it may also be man's last sight of anything.
''The Atomic Cafe'' focuses on the late 40's and early 50's, but it could not be more timely. It provides some of the background for what appears to be a continuation of what might be called nuclear-war optimism today - the unprovable assumption that nuclear wars can be fought on a limited scale without making the planet uninhabitable.
The film, remarkably well edited by Miss Loader and Kevin Rafferty, touches a lot of bases, including the cold war, Washington's efforts to root Communists out of Government in the 50's, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, as well as a brief clip in which the late Bob Considine describes Mrs. Rosenberg's electrocution in graphic detail, with his own patriotic sentiments added.
One of the few public figures who seems to take the peril seriously in ''The Atomic Cafe'' is President Dwight D. Eisenhower, shown in a clip of a speech in which he stresses that science has ''outrun'' our social, political and intellectual institutions. It is the feeling of the film makers that Ike, who is not often credited with foresight, is even more right today than he was then.
Not so incidentally, perhaps, Edward Zuckerman, a writer for Esquire magazine, reported in an interview show on WOR radio Monday that the United States Postal Service had plans to issue emergency change-of-address cards in case of an all-out nuclear attack.
Inconvenient but Fun
THE ATOMIC CAFE, documentary, produced and directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty; edited by Miss Loader and Kevin Rafferty; music coordinator, Rick Eaker; distributed by the Archives Project Inc. Running time: 88 minutes. This film is not rated. At the Film Forum, 57 Watts Street.
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