these are absolutely amazing. i think it's perhaps the average nature of the composition combined with those very ominous numbers identifying them. they also all have very interesting faces. it seems as though you don't come across faces like that anymore. was it the culture and events of the time they wore their faces into looking like that or just the film, maybe their diets? check out otto frisch and enrico fermi, some of the lead nuclear physicists involved in creating the atomic bomb.