(4/5)

It can be difficult for those of us who grew up in the last days of the Communist Bloc, as the Cold War was fading away into memory, to comprehend what the first couple of decades after World War II must have been like – the looming threat of nuclear annihilation mixed with the optimism of the post-war economic boom. That tension is the common thread running throughout the documentary/found footage film The Atomic Cafe, a collection of carefully chosen and edited clips from historical newsreels, broadcasts, military films, informational reels, and commercials.

The film begins with the beginning of the atomic era, at least in terms of public consciousness, the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. These images and those of the aftermath are as devastating as you’d expect, but it’s not long before we’re hopping back to the Arizona desert doing relatively isolated tests that inspire, among other interesting cultural artifacts, a desert diner called The Atomic Cafe. Despite the destruction caused by the bombs, there’s a fascination with them, too, and the power they hold. Soon after, we begin getting Cold War propoganda clips, including one in which a man extolling the American lifestyle and culture, epitomized by the new shopping centers being built in California. He was contrasting American capitalism against Russian communism; sadly, this materialistic mindset is all too true even today, even without the perceived ideological threat of communism.

As the threat of Russian’s nuclear capabilities increases, the clips create more and more interesting juxtapositions. An entire informational video (starring cartoon Burt the Turtle) shows you how to duck and cover if you see the unmistakable blinding flash of an atomic bomb detonating, along with numerous staged examples of people doing so. Immediately after, an interview with a group of scientists indicates that you’d have to be at least 12-15 miles from the blast to live, and the firestorm/fallout would cover several hundred miles – in short, duck and cover all you want, you’re not making it out of this. And immediately after that, a commercial for fallout shelters.

Through these clips you can see something of the balance beam that the government and news agencies producing them were trying to walk – keep people informed but not TOO informed, keep them jingoistic about America and united against Russia (and communism in general), and comfort them with fictions that there are workable safety measures to be taken in the event an atomic attack does occur – basically balancing fear and complacency. And of course, commercial entities were trying to sell bomb shelters.

The thing you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a film like this is that it’s actually fairly humorous (in a dark way) a lot of the time, from the incongruous clips of nuclearmania leading up to The Atomic Cafe itself to Burt the Turtle’s antics to the army squad leader who tells his bomb-testing troops matter-of-factly that “the radiation level may be high, but if you follow orders, you’ll be moved out in time to avoid sickness. Finally, if you receive enough gamma radiation to cause sterility or severe sickness, you’ll be killed by blast, flying debris, or heat anyway.” Okay, so maybe not everyone would find that line funny. I did. There’s much that’s horrifying and much that’s baffling, but the combinatory effect is quite entertaining – which is itself a little horrifying perhaps.

Though there’s no narration or titles or anything that would indicate a clearly intended message to all this, it all works fairly well together to create a snapshot of a time period – its optimism, its fear, its naivete, its fabrications, and its truths. And though it uses all archival footage from the 1940s-1960s, there remains an element of immediacy to it as well, as we continue to balance fear of nuclear armament/terrorism/etc. with complacent trust in the perhaps waning power of the United States and its allies. Who’s to say in fifty years our television broadcasts and training films won’t look just as quaint and naive as many of these?