Hiroshima

Starring:Kenneth Welsh, Naohiko Umewaka
Studio: Platinum Disc
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Very Factual and Informative
My Father Was There
At Wars End
Captivating
Editor in Chief, Armchair General Magazine

BBC History of World War II: Hiroshima
Starring: Hiroshima
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
ProductGroup: DVD
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The Day After Trinity
Hiroshima - Why the Bomb Was Dropped
Hiroshima
Modern Marvels - The Manhattan Project (History Channel)
The Nazis - A Warning from History

ASIN: B000F4RH8Y
Release Date: 2006-07-18

Description

It was the defining moment of the 20th Century - the scientific, technological, military, and political gamble of the first atomic attack. This drama-documentary attempts to do what no other film has done before - to show what it is like to live through a nuclear explosion. Set in the three weeks from the test explosion in New Mexico to the dropping of the bomb, the action takes viewers into the room where the crucial political decisions are made; on board the Enola Gay; inside the bomb as it explodes; and on the streets of Hiroshima.

Customer Reviews:

Very Factual and Informative.......2007-05-06

This DVD is a very factual and informative account of the most controversial events in the history of warfare. It captivated and held my attention from the beginning to the end. Even today, more than 60 years later the use of the atomic bomb still raises questions as to whether it was necessary to use such a destructive weapon that has created such unprecedented devastation. First one must consider the facts that faced President Truman. By July 1945 American forces had fought the Japanese in the Pacific theatre and suffered horrendous losses. In November 1942, in the battle of Guadalcanal the United States Navy faced Japanese ships at close range. The night of November 13, 1942 was filled with the terrible sound of tearing steel and the pitch blackness of the night was displaced by the glow of exploding magazines. The cruiser USS Atlanta sank, the USS Juneau went down taking with it, the Sullivans-all five brothers of a single family. US lost of life exceeded the enemy, but Japanese offensive strength was broken. At Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943, 1,115 US Marines were killed and 2,292 wounded. The battle of Iwo Jima, United States suffered 25,851 casualties and 6,825 killed. The island of Iwo Jima is small, eight square miles, but the US lost in life for the battle of the island is in no way small. In the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, on Iwo Jima, "uncommon valor was a common virtue". The last battle in the Pacific, the battle of Okinawa lasted 82 days. This battle cost 19,500 American casualties, in the air on the ground and on the battered ships of the 5th Fleet. Also 560 members of the Navy medical team became combat casualties.
Behind the battle lines in the POW camps, Allied prisoners of war were being confronted with a savagery of which they had no experience.
The Japanese used forced POW labor, 200,000 Asians and 60,000 Allied Prisoners of War to build the Burma Siam Railway. The movie, "Bridge on the River Kwai", glamorizes the horrific ordeal the POWs endured while building the bridge. Fifty percent, of the Asian POW population perished, 6,318 British, 4,377 Americans, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch and many Canadians perished. Hellish fires burned ceaselessly consuming the dead. Inside a special compound in Manchuria, POWs were frozen alive so that Japanese doctors could develop treatment for frostbite. They injected prisoners with every kind of disease from syphilis to hemorrhagic fever, 3000 died. They dissected men alive so that student doctors could see pulsating organs. In the European Theatre of War, four per cent of the POWs perished at the hands of the Germans. But in the Pacific Theatre it was more grim, more horrific, 27 per cent of Americans, Australians, British, Canadians and Indians, died at the hands of the Japanese. It was said to be 17 times more lethal to be a POW than it was to fight the Japanese.
When the Japanese learned that China had aided LTCOL Doolittle's pilots and crew following the raid on Tokyo, B25s launchedd from the decks of the USS Hornet, Japan retaliated. In a horrific rampage, Japan executed some 250,000 Chinese civilian in a period of three months. Also we must not forget the thousand of Phillipino women and gilrs that the Japanese soilers raped and killed in the Phillipines.
The Japanese atrocities against both military and civilian personnel can be spoken in many language in many parts of the world. They are omitted from the Japanese history books, yet they can not be ignored or forgotten. Hiroshima was chosen as a target becaue of it's miliatry importance to the Japanese government. These factors are essential in fully understanding the United Sates position on the use of such weapon. It's easy today to say that the we should have not used such a destructive weapon, but could you have made such decision in 1945?
The position of silent contempt, chosen by the Japanese at the Potsdam Conference on July 26, 1945 helped to solidify Truman's decision to use the bomb. Fleet Admiral William Leahy, Truman's adviser, informed him that if American forces invaded the Japanese homeland, the results would be a blood bath that the American people would not be able to withstand. Furthermore the Japanese code did not permit surrender.

My Father Was There.......2007-03-29

I am from Hiroshima. My father was 15 years old and was deployed as a student worker at a ship yard at the time. He does not talk much about his experience, but told me bits and pieces about what he saw. When I was an elementary school student, we had to watch the video footage of the victims that was extremely graphic. So nothing in this program was new to me, although it was very interesting to see how nuclear fusions started inside the bomb.

Having said that, I think this program is a good overview for people who are not familiar with the event. It talks about how the bomb was developed, the political circumstances, the US military mission, GIs who engaged in the mission, and of course, the effect on the people in Hiroshima. There is little criticism or political overtones in the way the program was made, although it is clear that there were terrible misunderstandings between Japanese and US leaders, and that a handful of Japanese extremists led the country into ruins.

I wish the program talked more about the way the atomic bomb affected people long after the event. There is one section that describes the "mistery illness" that plagued the survivers, but it did not talk about the deformed babies born to the mothers who were pregrant at the time, or the cancers that many of the survivers suffered later in their lives. The program also did not mention anything about the American POWs who were detained in Hiroshima at the time. They all perished along with thousands of people of Hiroshima. I am not sure how many Americans know this.

My father is fine. His family lived in the suburbs so none died because of the event although some of the family heirlooms had burn marks that were visible even decades later. My mother's grandparents, however, lived right by the T-shaped bridge that was used as a target so no remains were found. I remember my grandmother used to go to the annual memorial service every year. Although it was somewhat difficult for me to see the suffering of people reenacted in the program, the stupidity of the leaders, and the happiness and the joy that Americans were feeling after the bomb was dropped (not because I am bitter or critical of their actions, but because they really did not realize what was going on in Hiroshima and that they opened the door to a new era of nuclear threats), we need programs like this so we can learn from the history and remember that the war is savage, no matter what side you are on, and that the war should really be the last resort to resolve a conflict.

At Wars End.......2007-02-11

A perfect companion to the book "Shockwave" by Stephen Walker. It is a semi documentary having both facts and story line which follows both American and Japanese accounts. A very good re-enactment of the aftermath of the Little Boy Blast.

Captivating.......2006-08-24

I really enjoyed watching this video. The way the documentary was blended in with the acting was great. I thought the British did an great job of providing an un-biased portrayal. I would like to see more of this type of journalism

Editor in Chief, Armchair General Magazine.......2006-08-01

World history's first - and, to date, only - nuclear weapon attacks were the atomic devices the United States exploded over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Frustrated by the intransigence of Japanese leadership and desperate to use any and all possible means to forestall a costly invasion of Japan's home islands, American president Harry Truman authorized the bombings. The attacks killed outright, perhaps 100,000 Japanese in Hiroshima and about another 50,000 at Nagasaki. Thousands more have since died from the lingering effects of the bombs' deadly radiation. Initially widely celebrated in Allied countries for helping bring history's most destructive war to a close, the attacks began to receive criticism almost as soon as the disturbing images of the bombs' Japanese victims were widely circulated. At the 50th anniversary of the bombings in 1995, the smoldering controversy flamed into a nation-wide, very public debate in the US focused on plans by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC to display an exhibit that many veterans and others who staunchly support the bombings considered one-sided and unfair.
Such criticism, however, cannot be leveled at Hiroshima, BBC Video's outstanding new addition to its highly-acclaimed DVD series, "BBC History of World War II." Without doubt, Hiroshima is the most fair and balanced comprehensive presentation yet produced of what has become one of history's most controversial events. It is also a dynamic example of the inherent power of film media to inform and enlighten in an interesting and absorbing manner. All of the latest and most effective techniques in documentary film production - historical participant interviews, docu-drama recreation, archival film footage and state-of-the-art computer graphics (CGI) - are combined in BBC Video's Hiroshima by a producer of skill and vision into a riveting film that captures viewers' attention from the first frame and firmly holds it until the end. One might be tempted to call it "entertaining" due to the visual appeal of its colorful and expertly done CGI, but the film's grim subject matter makes that term highly inappropriate.
Producer Paul Wilmshurst explains in an on-camera interview - one of several bonus features on the DVD - that his goal was to present three things: the science behind the bomb; the history of the event within its political context; and the human impact of the attack. He succeeds admirably in each of these, including the presentation of one revealing segment that actually places viewers inside the bomb itself as it plummets toward the center of Hiroshima to show how a nuclear explosion works (via some extraordinary CGI). Immediately following that segment, Wilmshurst combines CGI with superbly-done, well-acted docu-drama to give viewers a realistic experience of the nuclear weapon's three terrible effects: heat, blast and radiation. This chilling segment is as close as any of us will get - we hope! - to experiencing what it's like to be on the receiving end of an atomic bomb attack.
As dramatic and effective as is the DVD's outstanding use of CGI and docu-drama techniques, Hiroshima's most poignant moments are the numerous interviews of historical participants - and victims -- in this tragic event. Although the high-level American and Japanese decision-makers have long since passed away, Wilmshurst was able to include several revealing interviews with, among others, President Truman's US Navy aide-de-camp as well as surviving crewmen of the Enola Gay - the benignly-named B-29 Superfortress bomber that pilot Paul Tibbetts christened after his mother. The gut-wrenching testimonies of the several survivors of the Hiroshima explosion present an image of horror and unbelievable destruction that puts a tragic human face on a target that Enola Gay's crewmen could only make out that day as a jumbled collection of indistinct buildings clustered around a "T-shaped" aiming point - the bridge near the center of town that became ground zero at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945.
Wilmshurst wisely avoids including a voice-over narration that is overly moralizing, a tendency that has marred presentations of this event in past productions. Instead he lets the participants and victims speak for themselves in their interviews, often placing their contrasting perceptions and opinions of the bombing in such a manner that the opposing positions are clearly evident to the viewer. Viewers hear both sides and can make up their own minds without attempts to sway them one way or the other by the all-too-typical, heavy-handed narrative of other productions preaching 21st century morality in order to second guess leaders and soldiers who sixty years ago were caught in the middle of history's most brutal war. Hiroshima is refreshingly even-handed.
Yet, Hiroshima's voice-over narration is an integral part of the film. It expertly weaves together the interviews, docu-drama, CGI and archival footage into a coherent, comprehensive story that flows smoothly, almost effortlessly, from beginning (the explosion of the Trinity Device, the atomic test on July 16, 1945) to end (the terrible aftermath - the human cost -- of the bombings). Wilmshurst made an inspired choice as Hiroshima's narrator - the marvelous dramatic actor, John Hurt. One of Britain's most distinguished and accomplished actors, Hurt's distinctive, deeply resonant voice perfectly complements the "action" in the film. His narrative performance in Hiroshima establishes Hurt as possibly the front-runner to assume the mantle of "top documentary narrator" that has been sadly vacant since the passing of fellow actor, Laurence Olivier ("the voice" that made watching the documentary series World at War such a stirring experience).
Visually stunning, historically and scientifically accurate, and powerfully presented, BBC Video's Hiroshima is an expertly produced "must have" DVD that is clearly deserving of its 5-Star rating.

Average customer rating:

Excellent

Hiroshima
Starring: Wesley Addy , David Gow , Richard Masur , Tatsuo Matsumara , and George R. Robertson
Director: Koreyoshi Kurahara , and Roger Spottiswoode
Manufacturer: Platinum Disc
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B0006N2E9Q
Release Date: 2005-02-08

Customer Reviews:

Excellent.......2007-04-02

If you are into Historical movies, this one is for you.
The use of Atomic bombs on civilian cities and the changes they create in wars are devestating.
This 3 hours TV series is pretty similar to HBO's "Band of brothers" as far as acting, and telling the story, not to forget the great true war footage used through out, making it a definite must own to any person who is into this genre of movies or wants to know how all the decisions were taken during that hard period on both sides of the war.
Definitely highly recommended. "Hiroshima".

Hiroshima Mon Amour - Criterion Collection

Average customer rating:

Hiroshima Mon Amour
Persistence of Memory
MAJOR BIG DEAL CLASSIC--(action film fans don't even apply)
An Antti Keisala Comment: A Nine-Film Retrospective About Love - Resnais
Audacious in subject matter as well as style...

Hiroshima Mon Amour - Criterion Collection
Starring: Emmanuelle Riva , Eiji Okada , Stella Dassas , Pierre Barbaud , and Bernard Fresson
Director: Alain Resnais
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000093NR0
Release Date: 2003-06-24

Amazon.com

An extraordinary and deeply moving film that retains much of its power since its original release in 1959, Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour is the story of a French woman (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese man (Eiji Okada) who become lovers in the city of Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb to end World War II in the Pacific. Written by Marguerite Duras and juggled, as if by wandering thoughts, in chronology and setting by Resnais, the film reveals the miserable and mortifying experiences of each character during the war and suggests the obvious healing properties of their relationship in the present. An emotional allusion or two can certainly be made with the more recent The English Patient, but nothing can quite prepare one for Resnais's extreme yet intuitively accessible experiments in fusing the past, present, and future into great sweeps of subjectively experienced memory. Yet audiences have never had trouble relating to this bold milestone of the French New Wave, largely because at its heart is a genuinely affecting, soulful love story. --Tom Keogh

Description

A cornerstone of French cinema, Alain Resnais' first feature is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. Utilizing an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award®-nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Resnais delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish, in this moody masterwork.

Customer Reviews:

Hiroshima Mon Amour.......2007-06-26

Alain Resnais's widely acknowledged masterpiece is a work of profound beauty. Beyond its sensitive presentation of a most unusual (and then, quite daring) love story, the film is one of the most visually striking black and white films ever made. Both Riva and Okada project vulnerabilities and emotions that feel achingly real, and we stand right beside them in their alternating bliss and torment. A mesmerizing, deeply affecting film.

Persistence of Memory.......2007-04-21

"Hiroshima mon amour" (1959) is an extraordinary tale of two people, a French actress and a Japanese architect - a survivor of the blast at Hiroshima. They meet in Hiroshima fifteen years after August 6, 1945 and become lovers when she came there to working on an antiwar film. They both are hunted by the memories of war and what it does to human's lives and souls. Together they re-live their tragic past and uncertain present in a complex series of fantasies and nightmares, flashes of memory and persistence of it. The black-and-white images by Sasha Vierney and Mikio Takhashi, especially the opening montage of bodies intertwined are unforgettable and the power of subject matter is undeniable. My only problem is the film's Oscar nominated screenplay. It works perfectly for the most of the film but then it begins to move in circles making the last 20 minutes or so go on forever.

4.5/5

MAJOR BIG DEAL CLASSIC--(action film fans don't even apply).......2007-02-22

So what makes a great classic film ? (there are few) Well, let's start with context. Here's one of the crown jewels of the French New Wave, that band of autuers who rose up in the late 50's to change the way the rest of us looked at film. And why? Hiroshima,mon amour is the grand-daddy of the time/memory gang --the films you so like to try to figure out today like Momento, or David Lynch, or the latest every-thing-is-upside-down-and backwards type of film. It's a film that got everyone excited. It's mix of past and present--war torn France and post-war Hiroshima--of regret and nostalghia, guilt, horror of the past, etc. simply had not seen the light of day before. Then there's the visual scheme--almost every shot in the film could stand as a fine photo by itself. (That spells c-l-a-s-s-i-c.) A script that's blatantly poetic-not a compromise in sight.
Add to that some admirably understated performances, a little nudity, and a profundo-unprecedented pace--
don't run, walk slowly. Brilliant intercutting, startling images. That all said, it's a classic that will probably
drive viewers used to "fast,plot driven films" batty. But if your interested in the history of film, open to a challenge, want to discover new ways of looking at film, then this work of art (it is defintely that) is something you might
find not only tolerable, but even inspiring.

An Antti Keisala Comment: A Nine-Film Retrospective About Love - Resnais.......2007-02-09

With WKW's "In The Mood For Love" I anticipated this comment a little.

I am like any other and really enjoy most films when they find soulmates from others, and watching them accordingly gives them richness that most likely was not intended by the film-maker. Of course, we tend to make up things that weren't intended by the film-maker, either. But that takes the fun out of it. These are also fun as retrospectives to watch during a holiday or weekend, and they also expose to some fine film-making. This retrospective and a commentary series deals with women, love and cinema, and has nine films, of which this is the first in chronological order. Of course, I am like any other who wishes to write something that's endlessly complicated and hard to understand. No worries, there, my friends: I write fiction. Ironic film-noir, where even the writer doesn't know what's going on.

So. First, there is the preconception about French cinema and how it understands love, women and sex. Everybody knows how it is, and as such everybody knows how silly it really is. It isn't how the Spanish are creating a sexual narrative: everything, including the characters, creates an empty vessel to be filled up not with introspection that could reflect into our own souls but with matter that comes from cultural dynamics. When I think of French films in general I think of journalists. And that isn't a good thing.

What this means is that not after this nor before Amelié anything that the French made was cinematically beautiful, not their women nor their love, apart from Rohmer, because it doesn't mesh with their means. This is a comment that's too polemic to be taken without slight irony. I will most likely deny it in a timely fashion. At least the Sensual and truly hyper-intelligent Rohmer makes me wish I had steered away from ultimatums. And I will. But what is so amazing is that Resnais is truly the kind of an intellectual you might connect to the French New Wave, and this film might put off many just because of its seemingly avant-garde feel. And let me tell you, that to think this film as a new wave film is missing the point, much like much of the New Wave missed the point. This film is about itself, and making itself just as it is about making of itself, but not in the conventional means. Indeed, there is an actress and there is an architect, two very introspective and cinematic figures, yet just as 'Marienbad' goes deeper than any other French film in revealing the film's function in contrast to memory, the catalyst in this film is love, and it is war and fear that is used as a wrapper, not the self-referential material. I find the focus on the subject of love and sex as the true center of creating an abstraction sensually fluid, as if the film had a soul of its own. This film has a soul and heart of its own. Think of a love letter become conscious of itself, writing and reading itself.

These are groundbreaking ideas that the New Wave wished to tie into a reality. Resnais wished to go the way of dreams and reflections, and memory. And even if we care nothing about that, this really could be a profound experience. But to be interested in the subject... this is everything, everywhere. And it's love that is driving us into and out of the bomb.

The next step would be Mikio Naruse's 1960 film Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki, that is, 'When a Woman Ascends the Stairs', not as layered a film as this, but it has fluid camera work, very much anticipating WKW, and yet it is something that differs from the most fluid 'Marienbad'.

With best regards,
AK

Audacious in subject matter as well as style..........2007-01-02

Alain Resnais does not neglect the blast of Hiroshima by wrapping it with a simple love-affair...

His film is puzzling, but, at the same time, a compromise, a promise, a pledge to human society... It is too daring by its conventional moral standards, distinguished in the way it was done, written, made and executed...

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is about the fortitude of man, with its mental and physical power... Alain Resnais and his writer-collaborator Marguerite Duras combined a love story with an anti-bomb story... They carry out the horror of Hiroshima and the sorrow of a lost first love...

Hiroshima is a tragedy that shocks us, while the story of love in Nevers makes us cry...

The story of Nevers does not trivialize the story of Hiroshima... We gasp at the tragedy of Hiroshima as we weep over the tragedy at Nevers... We contemplate a cosmic and a personal problem at the same time.

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is a new kind of film... It has great technical ability, illustrating hypothesis plus fact...

There is a close-up of Emmanuelle Riva , who has just glanced at Eiji Okada, asleep... Suddenly there is a brief flash-cut of the body of a wounded young man lying in approximately the same position in another place...

Resnais' camera moves like a stream from the present to the past and back to the present... It cuts back to Riva's face, and then back to Okada asleep, and in that split second the technique of the subliminal flash cut, used to describe a character's state of mind, is born...

This cut is the key to the film, for it is the man whom she calls 'Hiroshima' who reminds her of her lover at Nevers...

It is the tragedy of his race that reminds her of the small tragedy of her life...

This identification is carried through in the most neurotic moments of her recitative, when she looks at the Japanese and speaks to him as if he were her German lover of fourteen years before...

"Hiroshima, Mon Amour" reflects image and sound, past and present; the actual and the remembered; Hiroshima (a city of neon) and Nevers (a city of gray stone); the personal and the cosmic; a man and a woman; concern for the individual and concern for mankind...

Average customer rating:

Don't Overlook the Obvious: Keep It in Context
Finally, The truth is told.

Hiroshima - Why the Bomb Was Dropped
Starring: Peter Jennings
Manufacturer: Mpi Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
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Customer Reviews:

Don't Overlook the Obvious: Keep It in Context.......2006-09-19

If one were to focus on Truman's description of the atomic bomb as "the greatest thing in history" and NOT keep it in context with the Second World War, Give 'em Hell Harry would come across as a bloodthirsty warmonger to make Attila look like a boy scout - wait a minute, make that a "cub scout". It would serve to recall that despite Japan's attempt to negotiate an end to the war with the Soviet Union (with whom they had a non-aggression pact), Molotov under the strict direction of Stalin refused to even meet with the Japanese until after Hiroshima had been destroyed. When a meeting was finally sanctioned on August 8th, the Soviet message to Japan was a declaration of war, which promptly ended any further discussion.

On the evening prior to Hirohito's message ("We must bear the unbearable . . ") on the 14th of August, a group of relatively junior officers attempted a coup to prevent the broadcast of the emperor's decision to surrender; their position, in the spirit of Bushido, was to defend their home soil to the last man. Indeed, even after the formal surrender, there were still units fighting fiercely on the Asian mainland. Small cells of Japanese soldiers held out on islands in the Pacific for literally years, although most were isolated and refused to believe the "propaganda" that the war had ended.

To grasp the enormity and gravemen of that time, and, consequently the political decisions that dictated the state of the world for generations to come, is not something that can be capsulized. Among a multitude of arguments, the arguments that conventional bombing precluded the need for a nuclear strike, or that an invasion of the Japanese mainland scheduled for November 01 would result in a million Allied casualties are grist for an academic mill, and will be debated for centuries. To conduct such debates along any moral guidelines is pointless: A conflagration that consumed no less than 55 million human beings is not a moral issue. It is an error in logic to try to make it so.

Finally, The truth is told........2006-01-13

For far too long, people have been parroting the same soundbites about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The truth is, there was nothing noble about it. It was a terrorist attack that was aimed at the center of the city, not any military target. People often mistake these bombings as retaliation for Pearl Harbor (which was a military target in a time of war)...check the dates! Different alternative avenues were ignored in this shamefully tragic decision. I was impressed with the notion that dumb pride was put aside to show the errors in this horrific chapter in history.

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Starring: Keiji Nakazawa , Yasuyo Tanaka , Chiemi Oka , Sakue Shimohira , and Kasuji Yoshida
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Description

Through the powerful recollections of atomic bomb survivors, White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an extraordinary new film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first -- and hopefully last -- uses of thermonuclear weapons in war. Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath.Â In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience.Â

Historic Atomic Weapons and Nuclear Testing Film Collection 2 DVD Set - Vintage Hydrogren Bomb Explosions, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Effects of the Nuclear Arsenal

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Historic Atomic Weapons and Nuclear Testing Film Collection 2 DVD Set - Vintage Hydrogren Bomb Explosions, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Effects of the Nuclear Arsenal

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ASIN: B000NKFZ7U

Product Description

This four hour collection on two DVDs explores all aspects of early nuclear weapon development - testing, radiation effects testing, atomic attack footage, the effects of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and much more. Here are all the films that make up this historical collection: Operation Cue (1955) - Sound, Color Run time: 14:36; Operation Cue (1964 revision) (1964) - Sound, Color Run time: 14:02; Atom Bomb (1946) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 7:26; Management of Mass Casualties, Part X: Management of Psychological Casualties (1958) - Sound, Color Run time: 23:13; The News Magazine of the Screen (Vol. 2, Issue 6) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 22:59; Hanford Science Forum (1957) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 9:46; Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation (1950) - Sound, Color Run time: 20:14; The News Magazine of the Screen (Vol. 5, Issue 10; Summer Review 1955) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 21:18; News Magazine of the Screen: Atomic Energy - Sound, Black & White Run time: 21:26; Operation Crossroads (1946) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 26:36; Stay Safe, Stay Strong: The Facts About Nuclear Weapons (1960) - Sound, Color Run time: 22:43; Special Delivery (1946) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 11:49; A Tale of Two Cities (1946) - Sound, Black & White Run time: 12:02

Average customer rating:

Greatest WWII overview
Surely the best?
Just okay ...
World at War--Good look at history!
The Worlod at War

The World At War - Complete Set
Starring: Laurence Olivier , Sir Max Aitken , Robert Boothby , McGeorge Bundy , and Christabel Bielenberg
Director: Martin Smith (VII) , Hugh Raggett , and Ted Childs
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

World War II | Military & War | Genres | DVD | Video

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( W ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

The First World War - The Complete Series
Victory at Sea - The Legendary World War II Documentary (History Channel)
BBC History of World War II
World War 1 in Color
The Nazis - A Warning from History

ASIN: B00005NOOH
Release Date: 2001-11-20

Amazon.com essential video

Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves the numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal Television Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du Mérit, an Emmy, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The World at War remains unsurpassed as the definitive visual history of World War II.

The Second World War was different from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and Allies of all their activities. As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were particularly thorough in documenting even the most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing--in a surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first television documentaries that exploited these resources so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights:

A New Germany 1933-39: early German and Nazi documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending attack on Poland
Whirlwind: the early British losses in the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa
Stalingrad: the turning point of the war and Germany's first defeat
Inside the Reich--Germany 1940-44: one of the most fascinating documentaries that exists on life inside Nazi Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth
Morning: prior to Saving Private Ryan, one of the only unromanticized views of the Normandy invasion
Genocide: this film is one of the most widely shown introductions to the Holocaust
Japan 1941-45: although The World at War is decidedly focused more on the European theater, this is an important look into wartime Japan and its expansion--early 20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is superficial
The bomb: another widely shown documentary of the Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

The World at War will remain the definitive visual history of World War II, analogous to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should be missing The World at War in a collection, and no student should leave school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes. Rarely is film so essential. --Erik J. Macki

Description

The award-winning series narrated by Laurence Olivier. A powerful and devastating historical chronicle of war, composed of penetrating interviews with world leaders, statesmen and the military, along with the experiences of the ordinary men and women of a

Customer Reviews:

Greatest WWII overview.......2007-07-05

We have seen several very good overviews of the 2nd world war. This one is the yardstick that we measure them by. So many people are trying to rewrite history that young people can't really understand how it was. 'World at War' and 'Victory at Sea' give the even handed history that we need today.

Surely the best?.......2007-06-25

For me, as a British viewer this is almost like the `authorised' documentary television series about The Second World War. Considering the fact that most of the participants in this conflict, as young men and women were now middle-aged at the time of the production of this series in the early 1970's; they could relate their individual experiences which for them would have been recent memories.

American viewers criticize the lack of emphasis on the war in the Pacific. At the time, long before the concept of home video, cable and satellite television was conceivable I'm sure it was thought very unlikely that this excellent series would ever tempt the American broadcasting networks to buy it. So therefore it is not surprising that the series emphasises the war from the British point of view.

As there was little British, or British empire participation in the Pacific theatre it can hardly come as a surprise that the bitter conflict in Burma, Malaya and New Guinea should hold our primary attention. Should the series be made today, with the avowed intention of making a documentary series that would have to be sold around the world to recoup production costs alone, the story would more encompassing in its scope.

Please don't forget that the war began for Britain and France when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and the security of the British people and homeland did not finally arrive until the surrender of Germany in May 1945. Our focus was on the war in Europe and the Soviet Union. The war in the Pacific was a dim and distant event for the "Blacked-out" and severely rationed British people more concerned with the daily struggle just to keep body and soul together.

Just okay ..........2007-06-19

The very first episode was great ... after that it was hit and miss. I found multiple times I wanted to fall asleep on some episodes, but stayed awake out of some desire to feel I watched the whole thing. It is also narrated from a British perspective, and so as an American, I found little to entertain my appetite. Especially Pacific theatre combat with the Americans was almost none existent, as if British combat and especially in Burma was the only real thing that happened. It does have good insights into the Nazi's and rewards itself here and there, but overall I think the British slant and focus ruined the series.

I also found it humorous that the narrator tried to label Hitler as "right-wing" when he was a Socialist dictator. What?

World at War--Good look at history!.......2007-06-18

World at War is a classic! The combination of high-level policymakers' viewpoints and individual citizens' and soldiers' viewpoints gives excellent understanding of the events and issues. I highly recommend it for individuals or classes who want to learn about WWII.

The Worlod at War.......2007-05-13

A fabulous review of WW II through the eyes of the British. Complements the "Vistory at Sea" series.

Average customer rating:

Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes
Starring: François Chau , Stan Egi , John Fujioka , Shizuko Hoshi , and Lenny Imamura
Director: Peter Werner
Manufacturer: Direct Source Label
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Similar Items:

Hiroshima
BBC History of World War II: Hiroshima
Death of a President (Widescreen)
The Queen
World War II Collection, Vol. 2 - Heroes Fight for Freedom (36 Hours / Air Force / Command Decision / Hell to Eternity / The Hill / Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo)

ASIN: B000O785YM
Release Date: 2007-04-24

Lifting the Fog: Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Average customer rating:

Astinishingly fake

Lifting the Fog: Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Starring: Lifting the Fog-Bombing of Hir
Manufacturer: Mpi Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( L ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Hiroshima - Why the Bomb Was Dropped
BBC History of World War II: Hiroshima
The Day After Trinity
History of Nuclear Weapons - The Ultimate Weapons (2-DVD Set)
The Atomic Cafe

ASIN: B00006I04O
Release Date: 2002-11-26

Customer Reviews:

Astinishingly fake.......2007-02-04

I'm sorry. I can hear different viewpoints, different attitudes. Sometimes hearing them can change my viewpoint in fundamental ways.

And I am very interested in the decision to atomic-bomb Japan. What happened to make decent people decide to annihilate civilians? It was a difficult decision to make. At the time, it seemed simple.

So I was very interested in viewing this "documentary." What first gave me pause was that I could hardly believe that Leslie Groves, the overall director of the Manhattan project, would say such cutely-incriminating things on camera.

Or that Leo Szilard (no, I did not spell-check his name - I know it) would look so youthful, in colour no less.

Or that the whole thing, and all the cute quotes, would have such a 1990's feel to it.

Finally woke up, and realized that I was looking an utterly fake work of well-intentioned propaganda. Propaganda by any other name is still propaganda. It is not the truth.

This subject needs the truth. Simpler than that: this thing needs to be honestly identified as fiction, with fake actors playing parts, while displayed in glorious Technicolor that was not available back then to capture the conflicted people who made difficult, conflicted decisions, and paid the price for their decisions. Instead, you have actors, saying nasty things, while placards describe them as being the actual people who made really difficult decisions.

They didn't hire an actor to play a fake Robert Oppenheimer. Perhaps they couldnt duplicate his porkpie hat exactly. More likely they couldnt find an actor who would have the exact haunt in his eyes. When he visited Hiroshima, a Japanese father asked if he felt bad about what he had done. Oppenheimer responded that he didnt feel any more bad about it than he would feel for every day of his life.

This is not even remotely a documentary. This is misguided nonsense. Perhaps some people will cheer it, because it agrees with their idea of what the world is about.

To them, I say that it was a truly difficult decision, perhaps wrong, but they need to consider that, given the time, it might have right. It might have been wrong, but please allow that it might have been right. I have no idea, but at least consider it.

2 DVD Atomic Bomb Fallout & Radiation Films: Duck and Cover, Radiation Sickness, Nagasaki, Hiroshima & Fallout Shelter Footage

Average customer rating:

2 DVD Atomic Bomb Fallout & Radiation Films: Duck and Cover, Radiation Sickness, Nagasaki, Hiroshima & Fallout Shelter Footage

Manufacturer: Quality Information Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Documentary | Genres | DVD | Video

Historic Atomic Bombs Testing Films DVD: Atom Bomb Test Explosions w/ WWII & Hiroshima History

Product Features:

2 DVDs - 3 hours 37 minutes of films!

ASIN: B000IQ7JBO

Product Description

Nuclear Fallout Films Table of Contents: Disc 1 - What To Do If There Is A Nuclear Attack (1) About Fallout (1955)(2) Day Called X (1955)(3) Duck And Cover (1951)(4) Management of Casualties (1958)(5) Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation (1950)Total run time of Disc 1 is approximately 1 hour 43 minutes Disc 2 - What To Do If There Is A Nuclear Attack(1) Tale Of Two Cities (1946)(2) Atomic Alert (1951)(3) Our Cities Must Fight (1951)(4) Radiation Safety In Nuclear Energy Explosions(5) Radiological Defense (1961)(6) Stay Safe, Stay Strong: The Facts About Nuclear Weapons (1960)(7) Survival Under Atomic Attack (1951)Total run time of Disc 2 is approximately 1 hour 54 minutes

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