John Wranovics is the author of the recent Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, the Writer, and the Lost Screenplay. Wranovics will discuss James Agee's Nation review of tonight's film and how it led to a subsequent film script.

Introduced as a “documentary,” to be buried in a time capsule no less, this Pentagonal apologia claims its place in history, factual distortions and all. Brian Donlevy plays Gen. Leslie R. Groves, the man who supervised America's best-kept secret. Under his watch, entire populations are relocated and mega-labs rise in a frenzy of research. It's all men in lab coats pursuing the power of the universe: Oppenheimer and Fermi, Lawrence and Szilard, even Einstein gets a look-alike cameo. Not far behind the exhilaration of discovery come the little falsehoods-that Japan was developing its own bomb, that we warned the citizens of Hiroshima to flee. Louis B. Mayer explained in a 1946 letter to Einstein, “Dramatic truth is just as compelling a requirement . . . as veritable truth is on a scientist.” As a special bonus both Lt. Col. Charles W. Sweeney, the pilot who commanded the bomber over Nagasaki, and Cardinal Spellman were consultants. A revision-free film for carefree viewing.