The Beginning or the End

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.

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.

Although the far more realistic Fat Man And Little Boy deals better with this subject, The Beginning Or The End still is a fine interpretation of the events leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima. No really big star names are in this film probably for the better giving it a nice ring of authenticity.

Playing the parts of General Leslie Groves and scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer the partnership of the military and science that created the atomic bomb are Brian Donlevy and Hume Cronyn. Both bear more than a passing resemblance to the real people.

The Manhattan Project, the overall name for the effort to create a super weapon to bring a short end to World War II and get it before the Axis did was probably the best kept secret in all of a human history. I have to say it because it involved the efforts of a few thousand people at the various sites at White Sands, Oak Ridge, UCLA, Chicago and of course Manhattan. My father did his wartime service at Oak Ridge and he was just a regular GI and still had no real idea himself what he was doing there.

Fat Man And Little Boy is far more introspective dealing with the moral decision to use the bomb on a live target. The Beginning Or The End comes down very hard and unquestionably on the rightness of Truman's decision to drop the bomb. Both presidents Roosevelt and Truman are here and played by Geoffrey Tearle and Art Baker respectively.

The peaceful uses of atomic energy are also discussed and trumpeted. Four younger players Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Beverly Tyler, and Audrey Totter represent a quartet of idealistic young people working on the project who talk about a much better world that atomic energy can create. One of them dies in this effort. As for the better world we've reassessed atomic energy in the wake of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. With our dependence on oil however, nuclear energy is once again being reassessed as an alternative.

The Beginning Or The End still holds up well today with Donlevy and Cronyn heading an impeccably cast ensemble.

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.

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.