New 'Einstein' Movie Coming

Plus: Stephen Colbert with "Oppenheimer" parody

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books, including three related to The Bomb, and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

Stephen Colbert welcomed Christopher Nolan to his latenight show on Wednesday night for a rare segment comprising almost the entire show (last to achieve this: Barbra Streisand). You can find it all via YouTube. Beyond a little fun fact-checking—no, not about shaky historical aspects of “Oppenheimer” but personal habits such as whether he owns a cellphone—there were no questions about any critiques of the movie raised by a few of us. Such as: Why did he choose to show no Japanese victims of the bomb? Why does the script actually endorse the use of the bomb? Why does it omit the radiation dangers introduced at Trinity? And so on.

But at least there was this parody intro film:

Meanwhile, on a more serious note, there is new film about Einstein’s life and views, from BBC Studios, that will begin streaming on Prime and Netflix on February 16. Thanks to my wife for spotting it. Run time is 76 minutes.

From the promo:

Some of the key scenes in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer involve Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), including the one that brings the film to its blood-freezing conclusion. Now a Netflix documentary delves further into Einstein's feelings about the Manhattan Project. Directed by Anthony Philipson, Einstein and the Bomb explores his horror at the rise of Nazism in Germany, his emigration to the United States in 1933, the letter he co-signed to the US president, recommending that they begin research into nuclear weaponry, and the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film mixes archive footage with dramatizations, in which Einstein is played by Aidan McArdle, and the dialogue is taken directly from things the scientist said or wrote. "I made one great mistake in my life," he says in the trailer. "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have taken part in opening that Pandora's box."

Trailer:

See my piece here on this Substack derived from my book on the horrible (and White House manipulated) first Hollywood drama on the making and use of the bomb, “The Beginning or the End,” from MGM. It finds Oppenheimer caving to MGM pressure to approve his depiction in the movie while Einstein resisted.