Au carrefour du siècle

The idea for this film was brought to the studio(MGM) by Donna Reed, whose high school science teacher had written to her about the secret WW11atomic bomb research project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Later, Donna and her husband, Tony Owen, received a $50,000 finders fee for this contribution. Always a contentious project, cooperation came from the army, including General Groves, manager of the Manhattan Project and from top scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer, at Berkeley, and Albert Einstein, at Princeton. President Truman knew about the film and met with the producer. The script went through a lengthy development with columnist/screenwriter Bob Considine, and Clark Gable was originally in mind for the Robert Walker part. The Tom Drake scene, scattering a "going-critical mass" with his unprotected hand, is based on an actual incident, and the scientist who did it at the Chicago research lab (and possibly saved a good section of the city), died as a result.

Not successful at the box office, the studio rationalized the picture was too soon after the war and too realistic: audiences were not able to assimilate a story about nuclear energy in the late '40s, they were terrified of the bomb, of radiation fallout; pictures of Hiroshima were still in the news..

The film walks a fine line between fact and fiction (it received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary), but how effective was softening a docu-drama with a fictionalized love story?. The atomic "pile" was constructed on a sound stage, and the shots of the B-29 formation seem an appropriate metaphor for the film's subtext, the power of the nascent military/industrial relationship... moving forcefully ahead into the unknown.

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 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.

Americans were almost as shocked by the emergence of the terrible new atomic weapon as anyone. Naturally as the surprise wore off the public became curious about the bomb's backstory since the development was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. This MGM production was one of the first to bring that secret history into neighborhood theatres.

Of course, being Hollywood and concerned with box office, liberties were taken as the credit crawl states. Nonetheless, the account seems a reasonable one from tentative beginnings to worrisome testing to final delivery. The movie gives some attention to the moral reservations involved, but these are over-ruled by the belief that if we don't get the bomb first, the Nazis will.

The film was made during that brief interval between the end of the World War and the onset of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. As a result, the script is freed from political constraints that would have colored the account had it been made, say, five years later. Thus there's a hopeful air that the new technology will be used for peaceful purposes now that war has become "unthinkable".

Perhaps the film's chief value lies in just that sort of comparison between the onset of the nuclear age and present day. In fact, war was not made obsolete by nuclear technology, but limits were placed on how far the combatants should go in pursuing their aims. Even so, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 came apparently within a hair's breadth of a nuclear outbreak, while civil defense drills of the 1950's emphasized surviving a nuclear exchange. Clearly, the Cold War had not fulfilled the hopes expressed in the film.

Note also the welcoming line accorded the moguls from America's major industries, e.g. General Electric, who were being recruited to help with the project. Cynics might regard the coming together of big government and private industry as the symbolic beginning of the now notorious "military-industrial complex" that dominates so much of the contemporary economy. Note also how easily government seizes property and relocates its owners to other locales. Here the seizure is portrayed in a cooperative and problem-free manner for understandable reasons. The subtext, however, clearly implies the growth of government in the name of national security.

The film itself understandably plays up a human interest angle by inserting the two young men, Walker and Drake, and their girls at various points. Actually, the screenplay does this pretty skillfully without interrupting the flow, that might otherwise become a distraction. My one complaint is the final scene which really is spread on with an unnecessary ladle, replete with heavenly choir, etc. It's clear that the producers wanted the audience to exit on a decidedly reassuring note following the distressing scenes of a nuclear-devastated Hiroshima and the onset of a threatening new age.

Too bad that the film has become so obscure. Critics largely dismissed the film because of its sentimental side, especially the last scene. However, as an historical artifact, the movie may outrank the value of any other of that year. On the whole, the screenplay puts difficult events in a positive light, but by no means does it overlook the moral dilemmas that arise at key points. In short, it's no whitewash of the complex decisions taken.All in all, whatever one's views on the ethical issues, the film provides an important snapshot of how the nuclear age was first presented to an anxious audience in a popular forum. And in that important sense, the strip of film amounts to more than just another movie.