We've all seen the footage of Hiroshima getting nuked. We've all seen footage of other nuclear blasts. We've probably even seen some of the propaganda films from the '50s about what to do in the event of a nuclear blast. "The Atomic Cafe" ties them all together masterfully. It starts with Hiroshima, and goes on to show Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Bikini Atoll, a meeting between Nixon and a Soviet leader, and other such stuff.

I guess that I might as well put in my two cents. Around the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I asked my Russian teacher if she remembered it. She remembered being shown a movie in school about how to help a person affected by nuclear fallout; in short, the USSR was as guilty as the USA (although we certainly put them in a hyper-defensive position). As for the Rosenbergs, I know their son Robert, and he always explains what the government did to his parents. On the 50th anniversary of his parents' execution, he noted that the "War on Terrorism" has replaced the Cold War.

The overall point is that watching this documentary, it's almost impossible to believe that people took this stuff seriously, but they did. And we still live with the Cold War's effects today.

"The Atomic Cafe" is an interesting documentary that strings together US government propaganda films and archival footage from atomic era. Starting with the first atomic test through the Cold War, this film weaves these clips together into a history lesson. I appreciate how the clips were not just tossed together willy-nilly but actually were done chronologically and logically. At first, clips tend to talks very naively about the atomic bomb--showing solders watching the test blasts with minimal protection. Then the film focuses on fears in the West about communism and the Soviet Union.

So why is my score relatively low? Well, this film is a great example of too much. At about an hour and a half, the viewer is left numb--overwhelmed by too much. I think the film would have been better had it been shorter as sometimes more is not better. I found my attention drifting after a while and it was tough sticking with this one--even though it was clever.

Disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.

"The Atomic Cafe" was released at the height of nostalgia and cynicism in America. By 1982, Americans lost much of their faith in their government following the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the seemingly never-ending arms race with the Soviet Union. "The Atomic Cafe" reflects and reinforces this idea as it exposes how the atomic bomb's dangers were downplayed (President Truman calls the atomic bomb a gift from God) and how the government used films to shape public opinion.

Even today (2016) the film holds up as a startling example of how the government kept the American people ignorant, and may possibly have been themselves ignorant. The way the Army handled radiation seems dangerous and foolish today. What I would like to see is this: if the film is ever put on blu-ray (and maybe it already is for all I know),go back to the sources and clean them up. Obviously not all could be, but if you were able to improve the picture quality, this film could stay relevant and interesting for decades to come.