Doctor Atomic Goes Nuclear

10/5/05 to 10/30/05

Crossroads, October 5

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Past Films

The Beginning or the End?
Wednesday, October 5 19:30
In 1947 MGM offered this dramatic account of the development of the first atomic bomb. Brian Donlevy stars as Gen. L. R. Groves, keeper of America's best-kept secret, the Oak Ridge Project, for which entire populations are relocated as mega-labs rise. The film is as interesting for the historical falsehoods it propagates as for the dramatic frenzy of men in lab coats pursuing the power of the universe.
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Original Child Bomb (Free Screening!)
Thursday, October 6 17:30
Carey Schonegevel's poetic pastiche is a call to action. With Dan Reeves short A Mosaic for the Kali Yuga.
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Seven Days to Noon
Friday, October 7 19:00
A rare screening of this British thriller from 1950 about an atomic scientist who goes postal for peace. "Still relevant and surprisingly powerful [in its] noir-ish camerawork [and] carefully sustained paranoia."-Time Out
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Hell and High Water
Friday, October 7 21:00
Sam Fuller's headline-ripper from 1954 has Richard Widmark on a privately funded submarine mission to stop a commie nuclear insurgency in the Arctic. His ship of fools exemplifies the hysterical vigilantism of the Cold War, but also looks kinda familiar.
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The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb
Wednesday, October 12 19:30
Jon Else in Person. Else's celebrated doc on the father of the atomic bomb, a complex character, as seen through the eyes of his fellow scientists in the nuclear race with Nazi Germany. Constructed (in 1980) from previously classified footage, "an incredible drama of secrecy, intrigue and suspense."-S.F. Chronicle. Plus clips from Else's work in progress Wonders Are Many, a portrait of Peter Sellars and John Adams at work on their opera Doctor Atomic.
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I Live in Fear
Friday, October 14 20:50
Kurosawa directed Toshiro Mifune (then 35) in a daring performance as an eccentric old patriarch with a neurotic fear of the bomb. "The final effect is overwhelming, and perhaps Kurosawa's most sweeping statement on the human condition."-Film Forum
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Bell of Nagasaki
Friday, October 14 19:00
The first Japanese film to address the atomic bombings, made in 1950 and directed by Hideo Oba, is an intriguing melodrama set in Nagasaki. The U.S. Occupation censors allowed it only because it portrayed the positive spirit of the survivors.
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Half-Life: A Parable for the Nuclear Age
Wednesday, October 19 21:00
Dennis O'Rourke's film on the U.S. abuse of Marshall Islanders as guinea pigs in nuclear tests was a stunning eye-opener in 1985. As Time Out suggests, "This blast from the past lingers on." See it and weep.
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Crossroads
Wednesday, October 19 19:30
Noted San Francisco artist Bruce Conner's film composed of mushroom-cloud footage from actual H-bomb tests is "Conner's most eccentrically imaginative work . . . an awesome and fearsome poem."-S. F. Chronicle. With shorts, Glenn Scantlebury's From the Field and Bill Brown's Buffalo Common.
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Pandora's Box
Friday, October 21 19:00
In "six fables about politics and power in the age of science," Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares) intriguingly muses on the determinism that has shaped our age, from the Soviet Five Year Plans to the Rand Corporation's fascination with game theory and war. "I was reminded of Isaac Asimov's Foundation books . . . yet this was sober truth, not whimsical fiction."-The Times, London
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Fail Safe
Wednesday, October 26 19:30
Imagine Dr. Strangelove with a straight face and Henry Fonda's soul, and you have Fail Safe. "From its illusory calm to its final frightening sequences, this story of America today and tomorrow, and the people with the power to control the world . . . [is] the more frightening for being utterly realistic and straight."-New York Film Festival, 1964
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On the Beach
Friday, October 28 19:00
One of the best-known films in our series is one that really deserves rediscovery for its thoughtful adaptation of Nevil Shute's novel about Australians waiting for fallout. Stanley Kramer directs Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire, marvelous in his first dramatic role.
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Five
Friday, October 28 21:30
From oddball innovator Arch Oboler (Bwana Devil) came the first film in the post-apocalypse genre. There are exactly five survivors-one woman, four men-holed up in Frank Lloyd Wright digs. Hey, this was Hollywood, in 1951.
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The Most Dangerous Man Alive
Sunday, October 30 17:30
Join us for a pre-Halloween meltdown! A racketeer on the lam wanders into a secluded test site and emerges a man of steel in Allan Dwan's last film, oddly unappreciated in its day: "[An] absurd and tasteless melodrama."-Variety. "At the most crucial moments the audience howled."-N.Y. Times
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Doctor Atomic Goes Nuclear

10/5/05 to 10/30/05

For most of us, the atomic bomb is only an image, a roiling cloud rising like a grim specter, over and over again. Yet in the world beyond images, nuclear arms proliferate, as do the wielders of such weapons. Perhaps by revisiting images from the past, we can help defuse a dangerous present. Doctor Atomic Goes Nuclear looks back at the bomb as it leaves its concussive imprint on more than fifty years of cinema. Some films, like The Beginning or the End?, convey the exhilaration of great scientific advance, but most delve deep into the anxiety of the Atomic Age, finding, as in I Live In Fear and Seven Days to Noon, that hysteria and unreason were the temper of the times. Then there are the ominous outings, cautionary tales like On the Beach, Fail Safe, and Arch Oboler's eccentric Five, the first film to imagine the world after nuclear war. In Adam Curtis's prodigious essay Pandora's Box, we look at the fallout of bad faith that led us to plan for our mutual destruction. This fourteen-film series is triggered by the world premiere of John Adams and Peter Sellars's opera Doctor Atomic in San Francisco. It is a radiant portrayal of the days leading up to the first atomic test-and the first image of the bomb.

Steve Seid

Selections from Atomic Platters: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security, just released by Bear Family Records and compiled by Conelrad, will be played in the twenty minutes preceding each screening. Atomic Platters contains over 100 songs, ranging from loopy Red-scare paranoia to goofball raging about radiation.

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Doctor Atomic Goes Nuclear is funded by the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley. Thanks to Peter Sellars and Jon Else. Special thanks to Bill Geerhart and Ken Sitz of Conelrad for their fine compilation.