OPPENHEIMER FOR DUMMIES. Early Manhattan Project docu-drama (just two years after events) is less kitschy than you’d expect. Generally straightforward & well-produced (some atomic lab work & bomb blast tests remain suspenseful & visually impressive), but hard to work up much enthusiasm for a film with the flair of a Jack Webb DRAGNET episode. A big commercial flop for director Norman Taurog (cute kids & Elvis Presley more his thing), this comes off as an ‘important’ subject fit for High School auditorium showings: Current Events & Civics @ 24 frames per second. Best for cast comparisons: Brian Donlevy & Hume Cronyn as Matt Damon & Cillian Murphy . . . er, Gen. Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer. With Tom Drake as the main made up character, a pacifist-leaning/fatalistic scientist. The film’s emphasis on the inherent dangers of Atomic Energy as a modern Pandora’s Box surprising for 1947. With loads of well-known Hollywood character actors to spot as the scientists. (Make it a drinking game!) Our personal fave, Joseph Calleia as Enrico Fermi with his atomic chain reaction test lab under the basketball court at U of Chicago. (This is true!) Sex interest courtesy of film noir stalwart Audrey Totter for Robert Walker’s Colonel, and someone named Beverly Tyler as Drake’s insipid new wife. And the trailer’s fake test screening comments are a hoot.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Godfrey Tearle, the FDR lookalike villain in Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS/’35 (he’s the country squire with the incriminating missing digit), finally gets to play FDR.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Better films to use as a tune-up for OPPENHEIMER/'23 listed in that film’s Write-Up. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/11/oppenheimer-2023.html
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