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As Christopher Nolan's blockbuster Oppenheimer continues to play in theaters across the world, a documentary film based on the life of Ted Hall has shot to the limelight ahead of its release in the United States on August 4, 2023.
Steve James' A Compassionate Spy is set to offer a different angle to the Oppenheimer story. It will showcase the happenings before and after the creation and detonation of the atomic bombs over Japan, spearheaded by J Robert Oppenheimer.
The documentary showcases an up close and personal look at physicist Ted Hall from the lens of his wife Joan.
The official synopsis by the studios reads:
"The incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia."
A Compassionate Spy premiered for competition at the 79th Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2022.
Ted Hall: A nuclear physicist or a Soviet spy?
Written and directed by the two-time Oscar nominee Steve James who is known for his works Life Itself (2014) and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016), A Compassionate Spy offers a fresh perspective on The Manhattan Project.
The documentary goes through archive footage and interview scenes with Joan Hall, who is also the author of A Memoir of Ted Hall.
Ted Hall or Theodore Alvin Holtzberg was a young physicist who played a pivotal role in The Manhattan Project during World War II. Born in 1925, he demonstrated exceptional intelligence from a young age and by the time he was only 18 years of age, he was already contributing to the development of the first and second US atomic bombs.
His brother Edward changed their surname to Hall in 1936 to escape the anti-semitic practices of employers during recruitment as they were born Jewish.
Apart from being a prodigy in science and mathematics, Hall was also an undercover spy for the Soviet Union as he passed on basic yet vital information related to the development of a nuclear weapon.
On his 19th birthday, he gave away reports of scientists at Los Alamos, the working conditions at the labs, and the science involved in making another bomb to Sergey Kurnakov, a military writer for Soviet Russia Today and Russky Golos and an NKVD agent.
Kurnakov eventually passed the information to the Soviet Consulate and Hall was turned into an informant for the Russians. He received a code name MLAD which had a Slavic root meaning young.
Hall worked alongside his Harvard friend, Saville Sax, who was a year older and known as STAR - meaning old in the Slavic tongue.
After Los Alamos, the US Army revoked Ted Hall's security clearance owing to a casual mention of a bomb in a letter from his British sister-in-law, Edith.
In the fall of 1946, Hall went on to enrol himself at the University of Chicago to complete his doctoral degree in physics.
He met his wife, Joan, settled down, and went on to become a biophysicist after graduation with a focus on X-ray microanalysis, electron microscopy research, and analysis of biological tissue.
Steve James’ A Compassionate Spy will be distributed by Magnolia Pictures in the United States after it acquired the rights for distribution in North America from Participant. The documentary will unravel the story of Ted Hall through the lived experiences of his wife, Joan.
