I’m planning to see Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer at the weekend – on 70mm in Bradford. Any regular readers of this blog will be aware that I’m not a Nolan fan and I’m mainly making plans to see the film with a friend who is a student of American politics and wants to see the film from that perspective. He and I are both aware of the previous attempts to tell the story and after checking BFI iPlayer I have noted that two previous versions are available. In 2009 BBC4 broadcast The Trials of Oppenheimer in its ‘Storyville’ Documentary strand with David Strathairn appearing as Robert Oppenheimer in a re-creation of the interrogation of the scientist in hearings in Washington in 1954. The outcome of these hearings was the withdrawal of the security clearance which had allowed him to lead the team that developed the US atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subsequently to remain at the centre of US nuclear developments. Strathairn delivers Oppenheimer’s responses intercut with archive footage of his involvement with the Manhattan project and individual talking head statements by his students, fellow scientists and later researchers and writers.
The hearings are presented on a single simple set with just Oppenheimer, the prosecuting lawyer and a stenographer. There are some other simple reconstructions featuring actors but no attempt to construct a detailed narrative from these contributions. Instead the narration literally ‘tells the story’. The narration does also raise an interesting question. The BBC version of the film credits David Grubin as the writer-director and implies that the film was made for the BBC. However, the IMDb page on the film presents it as an American production for PBS in America and lists the running time as 111 minutes. Even with possible PAL speed-up or other adjustments this is significantly longer than the 89 minutes of the BBC version. So what is missing in the BBC version? Perhaps more disturbingly, the BBC appears to have replaced the narration on the film (listed on IMDb as by Linda Hunt) with their own narration by Zoë Wanamaker. This may simply have been necessary because of the edits they had made, but if so it is ironic that Ms Wanamaker is the daughter of another American filmmaker who suffered because of the HUAC hearings. Sam Wanamaker was blacklisted and decided to stay in the UK where he had been filming in 1951. The Storyville programme remains available on iPlayer for another 5 months.
I was impressed by this Storyville film. Strathairn is very good as Oppenheimer but I worried for his lungs as he constantly smokes, moving his cigarette from hand to hand. One of the talking heads confirms that this is also how he taught his classes with chalk in one hand and a cigarette in the other, constantly switching them. Not surprisingly perhaps, he died of throat cancer at the age of only 62. The main force of the documentary seems to be to show that Oppenheimer was hounded by the anti-communist witch hunt from early in the war through to the 1954 hearings. He wasn’t a member of the party but his wife and his brother and friends had been. What I take to be the hysteria of the anti-communist drive was not really motivated by concern that Oppenheimer would pass secret data to Soviet agents, but more that Oppenheimer had made enemies of two powerful people, President Truman for one and the other his boss at the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss. They saw him as someone who might disrupt the H-bomb programme after the revelation that the Soviet Union had tested an ‘atom bomb’. I’m wondering how Nolan will deal with this in his much longer running time.
BBC iPlayer also currently offers the TV serial Oppenheimer comprising seven episodes of approx. 60 mins each (on offer in the UK for 11 months). Broadcast in 1980, it too was a BBC co-production with WGBH, the PBS TV station in Boston just like the later Oppenheimer documentary. In this case J. Robert Oppenheimer is played by Sam Waterston. Waterston was younger than Strathairn when he played the role and his Oppenheimer is more energetic as he needs to be for the period from the late 1930s onwards. He’s also very good. I originally thought I would watch only one or two episodes to get the feel of the serial, but found myself compelled to watch all seven episodes written by Peter Prince and directed by Barry Davis. With nearly seven hours running time, this serial builds up a strong family drama and a similar drama amongst the large group of scientists which includes charismatic figures such as Edward Teller (David Suchet). The third narrative element is ‘Oppy’s’ relationship with the US Military in the form of General Groves (Manning Redwood) and then with the security services, the HUAC hearings and Admiral Strauss at the Atomic Energy Commission.
For a TV production in 1980, this is quite ambitious in its location shooting, though American audiences were perhaps not so familiar with the switch between studio video and 16mm film on location. It was broadcast in the US in 1982 and again there seems to be some confusion of running times, this time with less running time (350 minutes) in six episodes in the American version. I’m not going discuss the serial here in any detail but I do feel prepared to now see how Nolan’s new film stands up to these two earlier productions. I should add that there are several more TV and film documentaries and docudramas listed on IMDb, but I think I’ve seen enough so far! I admit to being baffled by Nolan’s attempt to make a spectacular film in 70mm about a narrative of mainly interpersonal relationships and a big bang, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen it.
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