This first book-length critical examination of nuclear war motion picturesfeature films, documentaries, and educational short filmsin addition to recognizing a new film genre reflects an important era of modern film history.Taken as a whole, the 25 contributions by 21 film specialists brought together here provide a comprehensive view of 32 feature films, documentaries, and educational short films comprising a representative selection of the new genreall produced between 1946 and 1975 by American, French, British, and Japanese film makers. In addition to discussions of such well-known films as "On the Beach," " Hiroshima," " Mon Amour," " "and "Dr. Strangelove," " "the collection analyzes and comments on a number of less well known but important films such as "A Thousand Cranes," " Countdown to Zero," and "To Die, To Live," " "documentaries and educational short films that hitherto have been inadequately presented in cinema literature.Marshall Flaum, one of the outstanding figures in the field of television documentaries, has provided an unusually interesting Foreword, and Jack Shaheen, the editor of the volume, has added a perceptive Preface and has appended a list of distributors and credits. A major contribution to the serious study of the nuclear war film genre, the book thus provides an analytic text with apparatus and notes, and will be of interest to general readers as well as students of the film and film makers."

King of the Cold War crisis film, Dr. Strangelove became a cultural touchstone from the moment of its release in 1964. The duck-and-cover generation saw it as a satire on nuclear issues and Cold War thinking. Subsequent generations, removed from the film’s historical moment, came to view it as a quasi-documentary about an unfathomable secret world. Sean M. Maloney uses Dr. Strangelove and other genre classics like Fail Safe and The Bedford Incident to investigate a curious pop cultural contradiction. Nuclear crisis films repeatedly portrayed the failures of the Cold War’s deterrent system. Yet the system worked. What does this inconsistency tell us about the genre? What does it tell us about the deterrent system, for that matter? Blending film analysis with Cold War history, Maloney looks at how the celluloid crises stack up against reality—or at least as much of reality as we can reconstruct from these films with confidence. The result is a daring intellectual foray that casts new light on Dr. Strangelove, one of the Cold War era’s defining films.

Just as we generally pay scant attention to the potential dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war, until quite recently, scholars have made limited critical attempts to understand the cultural manifestations of the nuclear status quo. Films that feature nuclear issues most often simplify and trivialize the subject. They also convey a sense of the ambivalence and anxiety that pervades cultural responses to our nuclear capability. The production of popular narrative films with nuclear topics largely conforms to periods of heightened nuclear awareness or fear, such as the fear of fallout from nuclear testing manifested in the atomic creatures in science fiction movies of the late 1950s. By their very numbers, and through a set of recurring stylistic and narrative conventions, nuclear films reflect a deep-seated cultural anxiety. This study includes detailed textual analysis of films that depict nuclear issues including the development and use of the first atomic bombs, nuclear testing and the fear of fallout, nuclear power, the Cold War arms race, loose nukes, and future nuclear war and its aftermath.(Includes bibliographic references, index, filmography, choronology; Illustrated)

Ranging across fiction and poetry, critical theory and film, comics and speeches, Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War explores how writers, thinkers, and filmmakers have tackled the question: Are nuclear weapons white? Paul Williams addresses myriad representations of nuclear weapons: the Manhattan Project, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear tests across the globe, and the anxiety surrounding the superpowers' devastating arsenals. Ultimately, Williams concludes that many texts act as a reminder that the power enjoyed by the white Western world imperils the whole planet.

Examines the role of American filmmakers in the ideological struggle against communism