‘Life Itself’ Director Steve James on Uncovering a Shocking Nuclear Secret in ‘A Compassionate Spy’
variety.comManori Ravindran International Editor High-profile espionage cases in the post-war period often invoke the grisly fate of the Rosenbergs, the first U.S.
citizens to be convicted and executed by electric chair for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet Union in peace time. But in the new documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” filmmaker Steve James tells the incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia — and got away with it.
The Participant and Kartemquin Films-produced documentary, which has its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 2, is one of a number of films at this year’s festival that tackle the topic of nuclear disaster: Projects from Noah Baumbach’s feature adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” through to Oliver Stone’s on-the-nose documentary “Nuclear” all contemplate some aspect of our nuclear past and future. “There will be people who will look at what Ted did and say, ‘I don’t think he should have done it,’” the Oscar-nominated “Hoop Dreams” director tells Variety. “There will definitely be people watching this film that will come to the conclusion that Ted, however well-intentioned, did the wrong thing.
But that is not [Hall’s wife] Joan’s opinion. She thinks he had courage to stand up and do what he thought was right, at great risk.” The New York-born Hall was only 19 when he was recruited to join the Manhattan Project — the now infamous group of scientists who developed the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
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