Nuclear Movies

This first book-length critical examination of nuclear war motion picturesfeature films, documentaries, and educational short filmsin addition to recognizing a new film genre reflects an important era of modern film history.Taken as a whole, the 25 contributions by 21 film specialists brought together here provide a comprehensive view of 32 feature films, documentaries, and educational short films comprising a representative selection of the new genreall produced between 1946 and 1975 by American, French, British, and Japanese film makers. In addition to discussions of such well-known films as "On the Beach," " Hiroshima," " Mon Amour," " "and "Dr. Strangelove," " "the collection analyzes and comments on a number of less well known but important films such as "A Thousand Cranes," " Countdown to Zero," and "To Die, To Live," " "documentaries and educational short films that hitherto have been inadequately presented in cinema literature.Marshall Flaum, one of the outstanding figures in the field of television documentaries, has provided an unusually interesting Foreword, and Jack Shaheen, the editor of the volume, has added a perceptive Preface and has appended a list of distributors and credits. A major contribution to the serious study of the nuclear war film genre, the book thus provides an analytic text with apparatus and notes, and will be of interest to general readers as well as students of the film and film makers."

Unfathomably merciless and powerful, the atomic bomb has left its indelible mark on film. In Atomic Bomb Cinema, Jerome F. Shapiro unearths the unspoken legacy of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and its complex aftermath in American and Japanese cinema. According to Shapiro, a "Bomb film" is never simply an exercise in ideology or paranoia. He examines hundreds of films like Godzilla, Dr. Strangelove, and The Terminator as a body of work held together by ancient narrative and symbolic traditions that extol survival under devastating conditions. Drawing extensively on both English-language and Japanese-language sources, Shapiro argues that such films not only grapple with our nuclear anxieties, but also offer signs of hope that humanity is capable of repairing a damaged and divided world. www.atomicbombcinema.com

"The story of the Cold War era Lookout Mountain Laboratory, or the 1352nd Photographic Group of the United States Air Force, which employed hundreds of Hollywood studio veterans. Engages with issues of the Cold War state and visual culture"--

Just as we generally pay scant attention to the potential dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war, until quite recently, scholars have made limited critical attempts to understand the cultural manifestations of the nuclear status quo. Films that feature nuclear issues most often simplify and trivialize the subject. They also convey a sense of the ambivalence and anxiety that pervades cultural responses to our nuclear capability. The production of popular narrative films with nuclear topics largely conforms to periods of heightened nuclear awareness or fear, such as the fear of fallout from nuclear testing manifested in the atomic creatures in science fiction movies of the late 1950s. By their very numbers, and through a set of recurring stylistic and narrative conventions, nuclear films reflect a deep-seated cultural anxiety. This study includes detailed textual analysis of films that depict nuclear issues including the development and use of the first atomic bombs, nuclear testing and the fear of fallout, nuclear power, the Cold War arms race, loose nukes, and future nuclear war and its aftermath.(Includes bibliographic references, index, filmography, choronology; Illustrated)

In this post-apocalyptic novel from Newbery Medal–winning author Robert C. O’Brien, a teen girl struggling to survive in the wake of unimaginable disaster comes across another survivor. Ann Burden is sixteen years old and completely alone. The world as she once knew it is gone, ravaged by a nuclear war that has taken everyone from her. For the past year, she has lived in a remote valley with no evidence of any other survivors. But the smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann’s solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley. Who is this man? What does he want? Can he be trusted? Both excited and terrified, Ann soon realizes there may be worse things than being the last person on Earth.

Seventy years after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan is still dealing with the effects of the bombings on the national psyche. From the Occupation Period to the present, Japanese cinema had offered a means of coming to terms with one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. From the monster movies Gojira (1954) and Mothra (1961) to experimental works like Go Shibata's NN-891102 (1999), atomic bomb imagery features in all genres of Japanese film. This collection of new essays explores the cultural aftermath of the bombings and its expression in Japanese cinema. The contributors take on a number of complex issues, including the suffering of the survivors (hibakusha), the fear of future holocausts and the danger of nuclear warfare. Exclusive interviews with Go Shibata and critically acclaimed directors Roger Spottiswoode (Hiroshima) and Steven Okazaki (White Light/Black Rain) are included.

The United States, the only country to have dropped the bomb, and Japan, the only one to have suffered its devastation, understandably portray the nuclear threat differently on film. American science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s generally proclaim that it is possible to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. Japanese films of the same period assert that once freed the nuclear genie can never again be imprisoned. This book examines genre films from the two countries released between 1951 and 1967--including Godzilla (1954), The Mysterians (1957), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), On the Beach (1959), The Last War (1961) and Dr. Strangelove (1964)--to show the view from both sides of the Pacific.