El principio o el fin

It has been about 25 years since I last saw the movie, but I throughly enjoyed it, and wanted to see it again. I thought is was a well done docu-drama. It may have some Hollywood in it, but I thought it was a reasonably accurate account on the development of the A-bomb. I hope that some day it will be printed for home viewing.

As a window on 1947society's attitudes toward the making and use of the atomic bomb it is wonderfully revealing. Opie is a hero, not the unfairly hounded"commie" of the McCarthy era. GE, Dumont, and other major firms are surprisingly prominently featured and treated as essential partners of the professors drawn from around the world. The rationale for using the bomb is presented with some tentativeness and includes the intention of saving Japanese lives by avoiding a prolonged war. An "Oath" to protect the secrecy of the project is placed in a legal context, not a political or loyalty test context. Even the "propaganda" noted by other reviewers is of historical interest. Cheers to TCM for showing it. For a comprehensive history of the Manhattan Project the pulitzer prize- winning book by Richard Rhodes is the gold standard.

The aforementioned reviewers have some interesting things to say about the screenplay, direction and the cast. Unfortunately, no mention has been made about the cinematography (first-rate) and the excellent music score composed and conducted by Daniele Amfitheatrof. The composer employed the services of an augmented orchestra, which in some cues numbers in excess of 100-players. In one scene (unfortunately cut from the release print) Amfitheatrof composed a dissonant motif in a syncopated dance-band rhythm, over which an electric violin plays a bittersweet theme. The great Andre Previn worked as one of the copyists on the score.

I remember certain scenes from this movie, which I saw only once, on television when I was a child. I've watched many documentaries and movies on the subject since, and have read several books on the development of the A-Bomb, because I saw this movie when I was young. It was absorbing for me. I do remember the scene where one of the bomb assemblers drops some of the radioactive material and is overcome from the radiation. This scene was repeated in the movie "Fat Man and Little Boy." I have been looking for this film for years on television, with no success. I would think that Turner Classic Movies would play it if it were around.

Someone, find this film! Oh, so interesting a movie.

I saw this movie years ago and hope that it still exists somewhere. I am not optimistic about this as it has never appeared on the History Channel or some other likely place.

This was the first of several films about the Manhattan Project and was perhaps the best one. It is the only one that shows the full scope of the project. The others are either about Los Alamos or the 509th Composite Group that dropped it.

This was also the only one that had some of the real people as advisers. General Groves was a technical adviser and Leo Szilard may also have been one (althought I'm not sure about Leo).

This is an important historical film and deserves preservation and re-publication.