Day One (1989 film)
This article possibly contains original research. (November 2007) |
Day One | |
---|---|
Anne Twomey | |
Music by | Mason Daring |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers | Aaron Spelling E. Duke Vincent |
Producers | Josette Perrotta David W. Rintels |
Cinematography | Kees Van Oostrum |
Editor | Debra Karen |
Running time | 145 mins. |
Production companies | AT&T Spelling Television World International Network |
Original release | |
Network | CBS |
Release | March 5, 1989 |
Day One is a
Plot
When
The film focuses on the organization and the politics of the whole affair, such as tensions between the scientists and the military, the
The story starts with
As Germany is being defeated and its scientists interrogated, it is found out that they have not even come close to constructing a nuclear bomb (partly due to bad cooperation by scientists). Despite the fact that no one has the technology now, and the original reason for project Manhattan is gone, work continues. Szilard, who first used Einstein to get his ideas about building a bomb across to the US leaders, now convinces him to join him in writing a letter to the president to do the opposite, namely not to build the bomb, in order to avoid an arms race. 68 scientists sign a petition, but that is held back by the military.
U.S. President Truman is faced with four options: peace talks (which would require the Japanese to keep their emperor, as eventually happened), a blockade (which was thought to be cowardly), an invasion (estimated by some to cost up to a million lives, though such numbers have been widely disputed), or dropping the bomb. Another consideration is that the USSR had said they would enter the war against Japan three months after the surrender of Germany and there is a fear that they might not leave. So Truman decides that the best course of action is to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, against the advice of General Eisenhower.
Cast
- Brian Dennehy as General Leslie Groves
- David Strathairn as J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Michael Tucker as Leo Szilard
- Hume Cronyn as James F. Byrnes
- Richard Dysart as President Harry S. Truman
- George Marshall
- Henry Stimson
- John McMartin as Arthur Compton
- David Ogden Stiers as President Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Anne Twomey as Kitty Oppenheimer
- Olek Krupa as Edward Teller
- Alan Scarfe as Ernest Lawrence
- Tony Shalhoub as Enrico Fermi
- Stephan Balint as Eugene Wigner
- John Pielmeier as Seth Neddermeyer
- Peter Boretski as Albert Einstein
- Patrick Breen as Richard Feynman
- Vlasta Vrána as Hans Bethe
- Michael Sinelnikoff as Ernest Rutherford
- Nicholas Kilbertus as Paul Tibbets
- Ester Spitz as Trude Weiss
Production
In order to depict a desert setting, certain scenes of the film were filmed in a town named
Rival project
The film premiered on television in the same year that another film about the subject, Fat Man and Little Boy, starring Paul Newman as General Groves and Dwight Schultz as J. Robert Oppenheimer, was released to theaters.
See also
- The Manhattan Project.
References
External links
- Day One at IMDb