The Beginning or the End

The film tells the development of the first atomic bomb and the bombing of Hiroshima. It uses a form that joins fiction and documentary together. Two parties had a say over the screenplay: the White House and General Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project. Groves was taken on as a consultant, was paid, and was given final approval of the script. Dozens of changes were demanded, and nothing questioning the attack on Japan was left in it. When President Truman was unhappy with how he was portrayed, a new scene was shot and the actor playing him was replaced. While the work wanted to look faithful to history, it openly altered some of it. Today how the film was made is a subject of its own, as much as what it tells. Brian Donlevy and Robert Walker appear in Norman Taurog’s hundred and twelve minute American film, completed in 1947.