The Atomic Cafe (1982). Directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty. Docurama.
Now that the Bush administration (not exactly peace freaks to begin with) has proposed launching preemptive nuclear strikes against non-nuclear countries and using teeny-tiny nukes as conventional weapons, we need to visit The Atomic Cafe more than ever. This acclaimed 1982 documentary now on DVD not only evokes, with dark humor, the early Cold War and its apocalyptic jitters but provides some hint as to how fear, paranoia, naïveté, and self-delusion can afflict the government and its citizens in any era, against any enemy real or imagined.
The Cafe serves up, with clever editing and without comment, astounding 1940s-1950s film and TV footage of everything from red alerts to Red hordes, from fallout shelters to the Pork Sheraton. We learn that under Communism, we’d never have “fine shopping centers” with “plenty of free parking for all the cars that we capitalists seem to acquire.” U.S. atomic tests obliterate Bikini Atoll, but don’t worry, for the “islanders are a nomadic group and are well- pleased that the Yanks are going to add a little variety to their lives.” An Army chaplain who talks like Marvin the Martian on weed calls the nuclear fireball “a wonderful sight to behold.” Ward Cleaver himself, Hugh Beaumont, plays an Army officer who invites us to “get acquainted with an A-bomb.” Burt the Turtle teaches elementary students to “duck and cover” when they “see the flash.” Richard Nixon rings “the bell announcing the opening of Mental Health Week.” Period music, from “Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb” to “Atomic Cocktail” to the country ditty “This Cold War with You,” plays.
The DVD lacks any extensive bonus material—just a Docurama catalogue with several trailers. But I doubt fans of Dr. Strangelove, Fifties fashion, or slowly ascending mushroom clouds will mind.
April 2-4, 2002
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 