The Day After Trinity

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Movie
Original title The Day After Trinity
JROppenheimer-LosAlamos.jpg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1981
length 88 minutes
Rod
Director Jon Else
script Jon Else,
David Webb Peoples ,
Janet Peoples
production Jon Else
music Martin Bresnick
camera David Espar ,
Stephen Lighthill ,
Tom McDonough
cut David Webb Peoples,
Ralph Wikke
occupation

She appears as herself in the film

The Day After Trinity is an American biographical documentary directed by Jon Else from 1981 , for which he was nominated for an Oscar .

content

The film tells the story of Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), an American theoretical physicist of German-Jewish descent who attracted attention , especially during World War II, in his role as scientific director of the Manhattan Project . A secret project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico aimed to develop the first nuclear weapons . Oppenheimer, who is known as the "father of the atomic bomb ", condemned its continued use after seeing the consequences for the bombed Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

Oppenheimer was professor of quantum mechanics at the Universities of Berkeley and Cal Tech in New York when he was appointed to Los Alamos in New Mexico in 1942 to supervise the Manhattan Project as scientific director . His first task was to attract the best scientists in the country to the secret project. After all, around 3,000 people were involved in this research project at this secret location in the desert. The scientists among them were supposed to be concerned with building an atomic bomb before the Nazis in Germany succeeded. Oppenheimer, who was actually an advocate of peaceful solutions to conflicts, believed that if the Nazis won the war, it would be the downfall of Western civilization. He was also aware of how inhumanly one acted against Jews in Germany.

Army chief, General Leslie Groves made sure that the scientists received everything they needed to build a bomb. Up to 1944, around 6,000 people worked together under Oppenheimer's leadership, including scientists, civil workers and military personnel. Even after Germany surrendered and lost the war, work in Los Alamos continued. Initial tests were conducted in the nearby desert at a place called Trinity.

When Japan refused to surrender in July 1945, President Truman had little time to end the war as quickly as possible to prevent the number of American casualties from rising further. This is how the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima . It killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people and seriously wounded 40,000 in seconds. Only a little later, when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, another 22,000 people were killed immediately, another 39,000 died within the next four months. Japan capitulated. The entire process then culminated in the Soviet Union also building an atomic bomb, with which the arms race began. Edward Teller , one of the brilliant scientists under Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, built the first even more powerful hydrogen bomb without his intervention .

The final part of the film illustrates how Oppenheimer fought to maintain control of the arms race and how he lost government trust after attacks by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life grappling with the fact that he had made the construction of a weapon of mass destruction possible and thus assumed responsibility for the deaths of countless people. He advocated that such weapons of mass destruction should not be further developed and under no circumstances should they be used. If it had been up to him, the best time to decide would have been the day after Trinity.

production

Production notes

Film footage of the " Trinity Test " in the US state of New Mexico on July 16, 1945

The film was produced by KTEH, an American television station belonging to PBS and distributed by the public broadcasting service (PBS).

The title of the film goes back to an interview in which Oppenheimer was asked what thoughts would preoccupy him if he saw Senator Robert F. Kennedy's efforts to induce President Lyndon B. Johnson to hold talks aimed at stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The physicist said it was twenty years too late and after a pause added: "That should have happened the day after Trinity."

publication

The film was first released on January 20, 1981 in the USA, and in April 1981 it screened at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival. It was published in the Netherlands on October 11, 1982. It was shown on television in Denmark under the title Manden bag verdens første atom bomb and in Hungary under the title Az atombomba születése .

reception

criticism

Vincent Canby wrote the New York Times on film and wrote that Jon Else's documentary served as an introduction to an era in history that could very easily be ignored in favor of subjects that were far less of immediate concern. Mr. Else and the film shared with Oppenheimer the terrible suspicion that the first bomb, successfully detonated in the New Mexico desert in July 1945, signaled the beginning of the end.

Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews , spoke of a historically important documentary about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who was the driving force behind the construction of the world's first atomic bomb, and a highly thought-out documentary about the dangers of nuclear war that Contained dazzling footage of the bomb in action and significant archive footage of what it looked like in Los Alamos during its heyday.

On the Rotten Tomatoes site, the film received a 97% approval rating in the audience score of 595 ratings.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The 53rd Academy Awards | 1981 see page oscars.org (English).
  2. ↑ Vincent Canby : Oppenheimer and the First A-Bomb - The Day After Trinity In: The New York Times, January 20, 1981 (English). Accessed January 21, 2020.
  3. ↑ Dennis Schwartz: The Day After Trinity see page dennisschwartzreviews.com (English). Accessed January 21, 2020.
  4. ↑ The Day After Trinity see page rottentomatoes (English, including ill. DVD case)