‘Atomic Cafe’ Serves Up A-Bomb Retrospective

Like “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Atomic Cafe” could also have been subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

This smart, incisive retrospective of the 20 years after the first A-bomb test focuses on the way American society responded to the advent of the atomic age and how that age affected almost everything from national security to the names of cocktails and the lyrics of songs.

The feature-length documentary also showcases some of the often-laughable propaganda the government foisted on a gullible public in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Some of the more audacious propaganda, for example, downplayed the danger of a nuclear conflict, suggesting that an atomic war would be as risky to a civilian as slipping on a bar of soap, or that people could protect themselves from a rain of nuclear fire by ducking and covering themselves with, for example, a coat. And in one classic understatement, a government official tells soldiers visiting an area just devastated by an atomic bomb that it would not be an ideal place for a picnic.

“The Atomic Cafe” shows the real horror of the Bomb’s effects on individual men, women and children. In one clip, an Atomic Energy Commission official tells viewers that Bikini Islanders, who were evacuated from their island so that it could be used as a test site, “are well pleased that the Yanks are going to add a little variety to their lives.” But later clips show the burns, scars and lesions on islanders’ faces and arms caused by fallout after a test blast.

Other disturbing clips show soldiers being briefed on an exercise in which they will run unprotected into ground zero of a real blast. An officer tells them that radiation is the “least important” aspect of an atomic blast. Besides, he adds with aplomb, “if you receive enough gamma radiation to cause sterility or severe sickness, you’ll be killed by glass or flying debris anyway.” Thus reassured, the men hunker down in trenches, ride out the shock wave, then leap up and trot towards the rising mushroom cloud. They later describe inhaling mouthfuls of presumably radioactive dust.

Film clips from the era interspersed throughout the documentary include praise for the A-bomb from politicians such as Richard M. Nixon and Lloyd Bentsen as well as from people on the street.

“The Atomic Cafe” (1982), directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty. 92 minutes. Not rated.