The resultant film is a strange mixture of elements. There are extremely tense scenes with scientists racing against the clock to develop an "ultimate weapon" to combat Germany and Japan, yet no one quite knows what such a weapon might do. Scientists might fatally poison themselves with radioactivity (as at least two did in real life), accidentally explode the bomb or its components in a populated area in the U.S., or even cause a chain reaction that could destroy all life on earth.

Also interesting is the film's depiction of the unimaginable logistical nightmares in developing the bomb: the huge developmental costs, the daunting security concerns, the relationship between the military and large American corporations that out of necessity become involved, etc.

Similarly, in getting the picture made, MGM needed the cooperation of the U.S. military and of the scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project and who flew aboard the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. At the time, filmmakers could not legally depict living persons in dramatic features without their consent, and so the movie offers up a mix of real-life historical figures and wholly fictitious ones, including a particularly sappy romantic subplot featuring Tom Drake and Beverly Tyler.

Worse, The Beginning of the End is brazenly dishonest in some of its details, towing the official government line in those earliest Cold War days and which probably contributed to completely fabricated myths about the atomic bomb still widely accepted as factual nearly 70 years later.

A Warner Archive release, The Beginning or the End is presented in a decent full-frame transfer and includes an offbeat trailer with original footage of its own.

The nearly two-hour film is oddly, almost confusingly, structured. It opens, even before the credits, with a faux newsreel, showing various real-life characters including Maj. General Leslie Groves (Brian Donlevy), Dr. Enrico Fermi (Joseph Calleia), Dr. Vannevar Bush (Jonathan Hale), and others placing top secret information about the Manhattan Project into a time capsule (in what appears to be a highly accessible public park) to be opened in the year 2446. Its contents include the MGM production about the bomb-building, also called The Beginning or the End.

At this point the movie cuts to the film-within-the-film's sometimes-narrator, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Hume Cronyn), who introduces for the 1947 movie audience a film not intended for public viewing for another five centuries.

Though chiefly an ensemble piece with primarily real-life scientists, politicians, and military men, partly The Beginning or the End follows fictional Columbia University research scientist and newlywed Matt Cochran (Tom Drake), who like other scientists marvel at the potentials of nuclear energy while expressing deep concerns about its initial development as an unspeakably destructive weapon. However, he shields these doubts from his devoted new bride, Anne (Beverly Tyler). Much of their dialogue here is exceptionally sappy, campy on an almost Edward D. Wood, Jr. level.

Donlevy's Maj. General is tasked with coordinating the effort among the scientists, leaders of industry, and the military, personally aided by ladies man Col. Jeff Nixon (Robert Walker), who has a flirtatious relationship with Groves's secretary, Jean (Audrey Totter).

Besides scientists like Oppenheimer, Fermi and, in a brief scene, Albert Einstein (Ludwig Stossel), major and minor players in the story include Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt (Godfrey Tearle, who does a fine imitation) and Harry S. Truman (Art Baker), and Paul Tibbets, Jr. (Barry Nelson), the pilot of the Enola Gay. The film is a veritable parade of recognizable character players, most in small parts: Richard Hayden, John Litel, John Hamilton, Frank Ferguson, Norman Lloyd, etc. Future star Guy Williams has his first film role as the Enola Gay's bombardier. I've been unable to confirm this, but the scientist who leads a group opting out of the atomic bomb's development sure looks like the film's producer, Samuel Marx.

Many precise details about the Manhattan Project were, obviously, still highly classified, so many of the procedures and equipment are forgivably fanciful, more like proto-1950s science fiction cinema than reality.

Less forgivable are deliberate fabrications, added to soften the decision to use the bomb on the Japanese. For example, the movie falsely stresses that for ten days prior to the attack leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima, warning residents to flee ahead of the bombing, "Ten days more warning than they gave us before Pearl Harbor," quips Tibbets. Further, as the Enola Gay approaches Hiroshima, it's met by anti-aircraft shells, also untrue. Nuclear chemist Harrison Scott Brown, in a review of the film for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947, called the business about the leaflets "the most horrible falsification of history," adding, "Hiroshima was a secondary target and had not been pelted with leaflets at all."

But the movie is undeniably effective in many ways. The special effects, especially elaborate aerial views of Hiroshima before and after the bombing, are extremely well done. The score by Russian composer Daniele Amfitheatrof, is appropriately eerie. Most of the performances are good, even when the dialogue lets the actors down.

Made when it was, The Beginning or the End walks a morally ambiguous tightrope, with much fretting about the power the Manhattan Project may be unleashing. On the other hand, in scenes reportedly written by Ayn Rand, the threat of Nazi Germany's own atomic research leaves no doubt that such power is better safeguarded in the hands of morally responsible Americans (without questioning whether Americans are always morally responsible), and there's no speculation at all that other nations might soon be unlocking Pandora's box themselves. Conversely, the movie deserves credit for being, probably the first, to admit that with the first successful test of the atomic bomb, the next World War can only end with the destruction of the human race.

Video & Audio

Presented in its original full-frame format, The Beginning or the End gets a decent if unspectacular black-and-white full frame transfer. The mono audio is fine and the disc itself is region-free.

Extra Features

The lone supplement is a trailer, built around new footage of an MGM representative asking sneak preview moviegoers (i.e., actors) their reactions to the film. The trailer is notable for featuring yet more recognizable faces, including Morris Ankrum as the theater's owner, and Barbara Billingsley as one of his patrons.

Parting Thoughts

Dramatically uneven and at times flagrantly dishonest but fascinating as a historical piece, The Beginning or the End is Highly Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, is now available while his commentary track for Arrow Video's Battles without Honor and Humanity will be released this month.