Atomic Age

Between 1945 and 1963 the United States produced hundreds of films about the atom, split between two moods: the bomb as an apocalypse to be survived and the atom as a blessing to be welcomed. Both are here, and most of them were paid for by the government, which puts them in the public domain.

Duck and Cover (1951), made by Archer Productions for the Federal Civil Defense Administration, is the famous one: Bert the Turtle's jingle, the children diving under school desks, the calm narration. It is on the National Film Registry and it is nine minutes long. Survival Under Atomic Attack and Atomic Alert (both 1951) are its adult and classroom siblings; The House in the Middle (1954), sponsored by the paint industry, argues that a tidy, freshly painted house is more likely to survive a blast, and is also on the Registry. Operation Cue (1955) and About Fallout (1963) document the Nevada "Apple-2" test on a mock suburb and the later shift to shelter policy.

The tests themselves are shown in A Tale of Two Cities (1946), the Army's survey of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in The Atom Strikes (1946), in Operation Crossroads (1946) at Bikini Atoll, in the Department of Energy's Operation Ivy (1952) with the first hydrogen device, and in Joe Bonica's Atom Bomb compilation. One World or None (1946), produced by the Federation of American Scientists, was the first film to argue for international control of atomic weapons; Let's Face It (1952) is a civil-defence drama for factory workers.

The optimistic strand runs through A Is for Atom (1953), General Electric's beautifully animated explainer, The Atom and Biological Science (1952) and Atomic Energy as a Force for Good (1955). Three Universal newsreels — Atom Test Nears (1946), Atom Fallout and British H-Bomb (both 1957) — show how the public was told about the tests at the time.

Taken together these films trace the arc from awe to anxiety to the test-ban debate. They were the raw material for The Atomic Cafe (1982), and they remain the best record of how a democracy talked to itself about the unthinkable.