THE BEGINNING OR THE END (1947)

This docudrama about the development of the atomic bomb is problematic because the writers and director seem to have been unable to decide how to tell its story and wound up torn between two different and basically contradictory impulses: a dry documentary and an intimate tale of the people involved. The movie jerks back and forth between these two approaches and winds up feeling stagy and dishonest. For most of the film, we see the growth of the Manhattan Project filtered through three characters with differing viewpoints: Army General Brian Donlevy represents the military, recent college graduate Tom Drake stands in for the community of scientists, and Donlevy's assistant Robert Walker bridges the two: he's an army colonel but he's also much closer in age and outlook to Drake. The story begins with a group of research scientists, headed by Robert Oppenheimer (Hume Cronyn), getting Albert Einstein on their side to give their experiments with atomic fission some credibility. President Roosevelt signs off on their project and the race is on to develop a useable atomic weapon before the Nazis do. Fairly dry scenes showing the research alternate with somewhat more emotional and philosophical moments between Drake and Walker. Both men have female love interests, but they seem far more interested in their work (and, occasionally, each other) than in anything as mundane as home and family. I have no idea how much of what passes for scientific fact in this movie is real, but the scenes of experimentation are actually the most interesting. Other actors include Richard Haydn, Joseph Calleia, Hurd Hatfield, John Litel, and Jonathan Hale; they each get at least one big scene, but they all (military and scientists alike) tend to blur together behind the starring trio. To its credit, the movie, released just two years after Hiroshima, does deal with the discomfort that some of the principals felt about what they were doing and where it could lead (and one character does die from an accident involving radioactive material), but that is kept in the background, and the military view that the bomb was a necessity for ending the war is never seriously questioned. The opening, a fake newsreel showing a copy of the movie being put in a time capsule, is ludicrous, but it's mostly uphill from there. Interesting, if a bit long and rarely as compelling as it wants to be. [TCM]