The Atomic Cafe (1982)

Superb Look at the Dark Side of the Fabulous 50's

If you're of a certain age, you'll recall duck-and-cover drills when your teachers told you to slide under your desk, face away from the windows, and cover your head. These exercises were practice, just in case the Soviet Union decided to drop an atomic bomb or two while you were learning your times tables. This was the 1950's, a time of nationwide paranoia about the Bomb.
"The Atomic Cafe" is a wonderfully nostalgic, often hilarious documentary about those days when the government produced instructional films about how to survive a nuclear attack, with announcers in stentorian tones assuring Americans that anyone can withstand a nuclear attack if simple rules were followed. Director Kevin Rafferty has assembled in this 1982 film vintage clips, music from military training films, campy advertisements, presidential speeches, and pop songs that revolve around the apprehension surrounding the relatively new atomic bomb.
What makes the movie a hoot today is the propaganda and lopsided optimism of the Fabulous Fifties. The editing creates much of the film's irony, such as footage of a totally leveled Hiroshima braided into suburban duck-and-cover routines with actors who look like June and Ward Cleaver's next-door neighbors. However, the film also illustrates how pervasive America's obsession with the new bomb was and how advertisers latched onto the word "atomic" the way they later embraced the phrase "new and improved."
"The Atomic Cafe" has more than its share of jaw-dropping moments. Average folks compare a nuclear holocaust to a tornado that rages for a few seconds and then quickly calms down. A California man proudly states that after most of his neighbors die in an attack by the Soviets, extra food will be available for prepared families like his. A happy, middle-class American family heads for their bomb shelter, equipped with a periscope. Two school girls display twelve Mason jars filled with bomb shelter provisions they made in their home economics class. The sense one gets is that nuclear war was sold to the American people as a bearable inconvenience, not unlike a two-hour power outage.
The icing on the cake in this two-disc Collector's Edition is eight complete government propaganda films, including "Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack" (1950), "Duck and Cover" (1951), and "Our Cities Must Fight" (1951). These black-and-white movies are both funny and creepy in that they were shown all over America and peddled distorted ideas about the potency not only of the atomic bomb itself, but of the devastating effects of radiation poisoning. December 28, 2008

cold war paranoia

I am a little too young to have experienced the "duck and cover drills", and it was interesting and sad to see what Americans put themselves through because of their fears back in the 1950s. I only gave the film 3 stars because of a terrible animal abuse scene (pigs) and because of that I won't watch it again. December 9, 2008

No narration necessary

The filmmakers were wise not to do a voiceover here, as none was needed. The images and clips speak for themselves. Sometimes you will laugh, but the laughter will stick in your throat. If you think the fearmongering, propaganda, and outright fabrications sound familiar, they should. The Cold War has simply been updated for our times.

September 25, 2008

Fabulous summary of the nuclear illusion

It seems like just yesterday. The fire alarm went off, and we were supposed to climb beneath the desk and cover our heads to prevent our being vaporized. One of our educators was a turtle who told us to "duck and cover." During the same period, we were lambasted with anti-Commie propaganda, and troops were in the field as subjects of further nuclear experimentation.

And we were told nuclear energy would be "too cheap to meter."

Those were the days, huh?

Then I remember in the 1970s a great poster, a copy of the one they used to use to warn us of nuclear attack, the last rule of which was "and kiss your *** good bye." That, of course, was the only effective thing to do if the blinding light were to show us that the "enemy" had decided to blow us away.

The people who put this classic together put together all the elements of that era to expose what the real nuclear illusion is/was. Those weapons go off and we're...gone. Duck and cover ain't gonna do you no good.

In retrospect, I think the appeal of the films put together to make this masterpiece was based on our technophilia: we just felt that we had better things than "they" did, we had more modern things. Sputnik may have stymied that for a while, but we just thought that anything "new," more technical was superior.

By the way, be prepared to see some familiar faces in here: Hugh Beaumont before he became Ward Cleaver, James Gregory before he became a regular on Barney Miller.

Oh, and incidentally, there were countless casualties among the subects of the nuclear weapons experiments. You might want to look up the book "American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War" to see what happened to some of them.

In the meantime, enjoy this classic, and laugh at what we believed to be true so few years ago.

(To their credit, I've talked to 21st century middle school kids who have asked what good "duck and cover" would have done. They see through what many of us who're older didn't! July 23, 2008

One of the best documentary films of the cold war

Anyone over the age of 45 will laugh nervously through this film at the "devil may care" attitude of "Early Cold War America." Between the blissfully ignorant man-on-the-street interviews of everyday citizens to the brutally honest footage of the military test film footage, the viewer gets a clear picture of what was happening to our nuclear arms buildup as opposed to how much the public really understood. Classic clips from interviews, training films, educational television programs and civil defense propoganda is stitched together to create a clear timeline of nuclear anxiety and naiveté without a word of narrated voice-over. This film also includes quite possibly the worlds worst actor: an army chaplain who is trying to ease the anxieties of his fellow soldiers with dialogue that took probably ten seconds to write, but what I'm sure took this poor guy days to rehearse and memorize. Worth the price alone (but you'll enjoy the rest, too.) May 5, 2008

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