content warning: nuclear war

August 24, 2023 5:42 AM

"The makers of The Atomic Cafe [1982, 1h26m] sifted through thousands of feet of Army films, newsreels, government propaganda films and old television broadcasts to come up with the material in their film, which is presented without any narration, as a record of some of the ways in which the bomb entered American folklore. There are songs, speeches by politicians, and frightening documentary footage of guinea-pig American troops shielding themselves from an atomic blast and then exposing themselves to radiation neither they nor their officers understood." - Roger Ebert

In 2016, The Atomic Cafe was one of the 25 films selected for preservation in the annual United States' National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The press release for the Registry stated that "The influential film compilation 'Atomic Cafe' provocatively documents the post-World War II threat of nuclear war as depicted in a wide assortment of archival footage from the period.

All the text in this post except for this sentence and the title was taken from Wikipedia.

posted by hippybear (24 comments total)

I remember seeing this when it came out and found it alternately fascinating and horrifying. Great film.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:16 AM on August 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

I saw this at least once at the old UC Theatre in Berkeley in the 1980s; we were all scared of the bomb then.
posted by chavenet at 7:07 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Watched it many times, even spotted the original restaurant in downtown LA once, but never went inside; it may already have been closed by then.

Since the whole film's available on YouTube, a couple highlights: Everybody remembers the scene out in the desert later, where unprotected soldiers endure a test from trenches and then walk towards the mushroom cloud but I really like when Eisenhower's talking about the pace of technology over visuals of late-1940s supermarkets, TV dinners, drive-ins and neon lights.
posted by Rash at 7:12 AM on August 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

Haven't watched this film in years, but it absolutely set a tone for the 1980s nuclear war anxiety that Ronald Reagan brought with him - that mix of nostalgia for the 1950s and existential dread colored everything duriing the Reagan years. I have the soundtrack of the film, and one of the things I always find remarkable is the religious opposition to the "The Bomb" in the 1950s given the later evangelical embrace of Reaganism. Almost all the songs except the now-famous "Duck and Cover" are apocalyptic warnings about messing with God's universe and destroying the world.
posted by briank at 7:26 AM on August 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

I remember seeing this when it was released, as part of a film series that included Dr Strangelove and Failsafe. Harrowing to say the least. I remember how few people were at those screenings, and remember doubting whether it had been a good idea to seat those images and cold war ideas so firmly in my mind. For all of his many many faults, Reagan's insistence that the cold war come to end still counts as part of his legacy in my mind.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:27 AM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

OHenryPacey
That's because Reagan was such an accomplished actor.
posted by DJZouke at 8:51 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

To me, the contrast between the two cultures so notoriously divided by a common language is really well illustrated by the approaches to this subject taken by The Atomic Cafe vs. Threads.

Threads contains no Aw Shucks whatsoever, giving the viewer zero opportunity to shake their head and marvel at how naive and deluded and propaganda-addled Those Old Timey People were.
posted by flabdablet at 9:50 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure that it's a fair comparison. Threads would be more directly compared with The Day After, as it's a narrative about nuclear war, IMO. And they were both television films.
posted by hippybear at 9:53 AM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

... from 1983, where The Atomic Cafe documentary came out the year previously.
posted by Rash at 9:58 AM on August 24, 2023

If you haven’t seen it before, you might be interested in the Tom Johnson and Lance Bird film No Place to Hide: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Bomb from 1982. It incorporates segments from a variety of “educational films” produced by the US Government to sell people on the idea that they’d be protected from an atom bomb if they built a shelter (spoiler: they wouldn’t be). Narration is by Martin Sheen, Music by Brian Eno.

It doesn't appear the film was ever given wide distribution nor released on commercial VHS or DVD media. It was probably only aired on public TV stations at the time. Here's a link to the film as it was presented as part of the 1982 Baltimore International Film Festival. It runs about 10 minutes, followed by two other independent shorts presented by John Waters.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:39 AM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Honestly, if you're looking for a more apt comparison to Atomic Cafe from the UK, I'd go with When The Wind Blows. It does the best job of capturing the naiveté held by people who thought this shit was surviveable.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:40 AM on August 24, 2023 [3 favorites]

To me, the contrast between the two cultures so notoriously divided by a common language is really well illustrated by the approaches to this subject taken by The Atomic Cafe vs. Threads.

Threads contains no Aw Shucks whatsoever, giving the viewer zero opportunity to shake their head and marvel at how naive and deluded and propaganda-addled Those Old Timey People were.

As a Gen X'er from the United States, Atomic Cafe felt really mind-blowing, because it uncovered a lot of campy, embarrassing material that the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers did not want later generations to know about. I totally felt like I was seeing something that I shouldn't see, which was heightened by how difficult the film was to get on VHS. For me, it was the beginning of a new Gen X sensibility where you could unearth all that embarrassing cultural detritus that Baby Boomers wanted to forget & ironically roll your eyes at it all. If anything, the exposure of all the nonsense propaganda that they distributed in the 1950s didn't make feel condescending to people in the 1950s; it just made me made at how blatantly the nuclear war planners of the era were lying to them.
posted by jonp72 at 11:07 AM on August 24, 2023 [6 favorites]

The Atomic Cafe also had a great soundtrack album that compiled a lot of atomic-themed songs from the late 1940s and early 1950s, including more material than they could fit in the film (IIRC). The gospel song Jesus Hits Like An Atom Bomb is definitely a wild artifact of its time.
posted by jonp72 at 11:11 AM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Radio Bikini also comes to mind.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 11:12 AM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bikinis were, of course, named for the Bikini atoll, which was the site of nuclear tests.

Bikinis were introduced with a photoshoot at the atoll, but I casually looked for some images from that shoot a few years ago w/o finding any, nor could I dig up any information about the ultimate fates of the models or other people who had been there.
posted by jamjam at 11:22 AM on August 24, 2023

I remember seeing this when it came out and found it alternately fascinating and horrifying. Great film.
Alternatively fascinating and horrifying is a great description- and with a very rapid switch between the two: the cutesy “Atomic Cocktail” scenes and lingering music played over footage of pigs just before and after close exposure to atomic tests. There is probably an equivalent film made by the soviets and I would be interested in that by contrast.
posted by rongorongo at 12:09 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

We watched this in my high school history class - it might actually have been the only video in that class. "Duck and Cover" was an instant classic.
posted by mersen at 12:32 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

USA Network's Night Flight aired a special on occasion called Atomic TV, which was a similar hodgepodge of nuclear-themed films, music and oddities with a much lighter overall tone.

Snippets of it are found here. The whole thing is apparently on Night Flight Plus, whatever that is.
posted by delfin at 12:37 PM on August 24, 2023

Bikinis were, of course, named for the Bikini atoll, which was the site of nuclear tests.

Also where SpongeBob SquarePants lives.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:57 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bikinis were introduced with a photoshoot at the atoll, but I casually looked for some images from that shoot a few years ago w/o finding any, nor could I dig up any information about the ultimate fates of the models or other people who had been there.

They were introduced in Paris five days after the Bikini Atoll tests. The logistics of getting to a remote island in the south Pacific would make it nearly impossible, let alone any military restrictions.
posted by theclaw at 5:04 PM on August 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

That must be why I couldn’t find any!

But I would have sworn that I read there was a Bikini swimsuit photoshoot at the Bikini atoll.
posted by jamjam at 5:55 PM on August 24, 2023

I love this movie. In addition to what it taught me about the real world, it made Fallout make a lot more sense. That and A Boy and His Dog, which also has a place in this discussion.
posted by BeeDo at 6:06 PM on August 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

to sell people on the idea that they’d be protected from an atom bomb if they built a shelter

Speaking of shelters....

Not to mention (80's Masque version)

And how it'd most likely turn out, Aussie style.
posted by gtrwolf at 11:48 AM on August 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Why We Secretly Want the World to End (Zoe Bee, YouTube, 1h5m5s; Piped; Patreon)
posted by flabdablet at 6:16 AM on August 26, 2023