Thanks to reader Jason Alley for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run in two weeks) see the bottom of this post.
One of the most fascinating aspects of American history during the 1950s was the way the image of wholesome innocence was juxtaposed with perhaps the greatest sustained wave of fear our country has ever felt- the fear of nuclear annihilation. Of course, the two were hardly mutually exclusive- it was partly the paranoia that was sweeping the country at the time that kept all “good law-abiding Americans” on the straight and narrow path, lest they draw undue attention. This contrast between the white-bread face of fifties America and the tangible threat of the Bomb is but one notable aspect of the documentary The Atomic Café, but it’s probably the one that registered with me most strongly.
When regular Screengrab reader Jason Alley recommended The Atomic Café for this week’s Reviews By Request, I was expecting something more kitschy. The film's poster and the synopsis on IMDb suggested something along the lines of the documentary Hell’s Highway, which took a wink-wink look back at those cheeseball highway safety movies many of us were made to suffer through in Driver’s Ed. But while some of the helpful hints offered by the atomic bomb-themed classroom films seen in The Atomic Café sound pretty risible in retrospect, the film is deadly serious not just about the horror of potential nuclear war, but about how little we really knew about it back then.
Rather than a haphazard montage of old educational films and newsreel footage, Atomic Café directors Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, and Pierce Rafferty structure the film as a chronological history of the building nuclear threat, told entirely through “found footage.” It’s this structure that’s key to the movie’s effect. A looser film might draw attention to the individual bits themselves, possibly drawing the same sort of knowing laughter that is often afforded misguided cautionary relics of yore (e.g. Reefer Madness). Instead, the chronology of the film allows the information to have a cumulative effect, as we approach the mindset of the shorts based on what the film has already shown us.
Consider how the film begins with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The footage that follows focuses largely on the American idea that these bombings brought about the end of World War II (there’s even a newsreel entitled ”Peace: Isn’t It Wonderful?”). But while this might have indeed been the case, the footage from Japan tells a different story- charred corpses, mangled bodies, buildings leveled to the ground. As we see an aerial view of a bombed city, the filmmakers play an old American radio show in the background, with the hosts joking that the city looks “like Ebbets Field after a Giants doubleheader.”
But it wasn’t a joke anymore when the Soviets got their own Bomb. Anti-Communist fervor consumed our government, the Rosenbergs were executed, and we began preparing for the worst. Yet strangely enough, American newsreels and educational films actually downplayed the potential destruction a Soviet attack could cause. Bert the Turtle tells children to “duck and cover,” grade schoolers stock up on canned goods, and families build fallout shelters in the basements. All the while, those in the know suggest that these preparations might not be nearly enough to protect us, and wouldn’t even function as a deterrent.
All the while, the Raffertys and Loader use nothing but pre-existing audio and film, but they nonetheless make their points in no uncertain terms. This is especially true of the film’s final montage, when the film intercuts declassified films of actual nuclear tests with shots of people reacting to hypothetic blasts in educational films. As we see children crawling under their desks and adults covering themselves with picnic blankets, it’s hard not to marvel at how ill-prepared we really were for the possibility of nuclear war. How lucky for everyone that we never got to that point.
Small touches linger in the mind. An Army film showing soldiers participating in radiation experiments. An announcer interrupting a monologue about the Communist threat to plug two local shopping centers as bastions of “glorious capitalism.” A single shot of a Japanese man used twice, once in the lead-in to the footage of the Hiroshima bombing, and again in the final montage- perhaps as a way of musing how little good ducking and covering would have done him. Newsreel footage of a Wisconsin town simulating a “Communist invasion.” Then-Vice President Nixon proclaiming mental health to be “the single most important issue facing Americans today.” A priest insistently preaching the need to keep extra people out of your fallout shelter, by using force if necessary.
Watching The Atomic Café, I thought back to Peter Watkins’ masterpiece The War Game, which imagined the aftermath of a nuclear blast on an ill-prepared society. But while The Atomic Café lacks the gut-punch terror of Watkins’ film, its specificity and comprehensive recreation of the mindset of the period makes it worthy of being mentioned in the same breath, and that’s no mean feat.
So, what movie would you like me to review for the next installment of Reviews by Request? Let me know in the comments section below. To refresh your memory, here are the rules for requesting a movie to be reviewed: (1) it has to be a movie I haven’t seen, (2) it has to be available through Netflix, and (3) please only request one film. Other than that, anything is fair game. First to suggest a movie that qualifies gets their requested review. See you in two weeks!