THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: #25. Dr. Strangelove (1964)

 

The full title is “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb”. It was released in 1964 at the height of the Cold War. The director was the esteemed Stanley Kubrick using a screenplay adapting the thriller Red Alert by Peter George. The movie was originally meant to be serious, but Kubrick transformed it into a black comedy. The production revolved around Peter Sellers (the film was done in England because Sellers could not leave due to divorce proceedings) as Columbia Pictures insisted on him playing four roles. Sellers was removed from the Kong role because of a fortuitous sprained ankle (he was uncomfortable with the Southern accent and did not want to play it). The movie is a satire of real Cold War personalities and paranoia. The U.S. Air Force did not cooperate with the production because of the screenplay. The release of the film was delayed for several months because of the Kennedy assassination. And a little editing had to be done. When Maj. Kong looks at the survival items that included condoms, he remarks that a guy could have a good time in Dallas with all that stuff. Dubbing changed “Dallas” to “Vegas”. It was nominated for  four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White). The movie was ranked the 26^th best American film in AFI’s list in 1998 (#39 in the 2007 list). It was one of the first 25 films to be chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry. The criteria was for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The movie opens with a disclaimer from the USAF stating that safeguards would prevent the events shown in the film (true). A narrator tells us that the Russians are rumored to be working on a “doomsday device”. At an air base, Gen. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has his men on red alert claiming a shooting war has begun. He sends a message in code to the orbiting B-52 force initiating their flight into Russian to nuclear bomb strategic targets. A British liaison named Mandrake (Sellers) is appalled to find the clearly mad Ripper bent on starting a nuclear war. Ripper rants about the fluoridation of water as a Communist plot to contaminate our “bodily fluids”. He pulls a gun on Mandrake and holds him hostage.

In the “War Room” in Washington, Gen. Turgidson (George C. Scott) explains the situation to Pres. Muffley (Sellers). It seems that an obscure war plan allows a commander such as Ripper to initiate a nuclear attack on his own initiative. Turgidson argues that now that the plan has been put into effect the U.S. should go all in and destroy Russia. “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed – at most 10-15 million deaths. Tops – depending on the breaks”. Muffley is portrayed as a typical pacifist, liberal, Democrat. He is appalled at Turgidson’s proposal. Instead he orders the Army to assault Ripper’s base to get the recall code from him and then calls Russian Premier Kissoff via the “Hot Line” to apologize and help diffuse the situation by coordinating the shooting down of the bombers. The ensuing phone conversation is one of the funniest in film history.
The Russian ambassador arrives to inform Muffley about the Russian Doomsday Machine which is designed to end life on Earth for the next 93 years if Russia comes under nuclear attack. This was developed because of a perceived doomsday device gap. Dr. Strangelove (Sellers) is called in for his expertise on nuclear strategy. He is obviously an ex-Nazi who has trouble controlling his right arm (it sometimes does the Nazi salute or tries to strangle him). This results in some funny physical comedy. While all this is going on, a squadron of B-52 bombers are on the way to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet targets.

ACTING:   A+                 

ACTION:   N/A

ACCURACY:N/A         

PLOT:  A+                  

REALISM:   N/A 

CINEMATOGRAPHY:   A  

SCORE:   C

SCENE:  the last one where Dr. discusses saving 100,000 lives in mine shafts

QUOTE:  Pres. Muffley: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

CRITIQUE: “Dr. Strangelove” is a political satire set in the Cold War. It taps in skillfully to the paranoia of the early 60s. Keep in mind that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred just a year before filming began. Somewhat surprisingly, considering that it was set and produced in a thankfully bygone era, it holds up very well for modern audiences. (Speaking of holding up, the B-52 is still in use!) The movie is very funny, but it helps if you are a baby boomer who lived through the Cold War when the scenario was not unrealistic. We had movies like “Fail Safe” and “The Day After”, and even “Godzilla” to make us crap our pants. We needed a movie that balanced those grim features with biting humor. That biting humor was almost marred by the original script which called for a pie fight in the final scene. Thank God Kubrick came to his senses and ditched it.

The screenplay by Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George is fantastic. It has some of the greatest lines in movie history, including President Muffley quelling a scuffle by saying “Gentlemen, you can’t fight here. This is a war room.” It also has several famous scenes including Keenan Wynn’s assault on a Coke machine. He gets the great line: “You don’t think I would go into combat with loose change in my pocket.” The film is one of the most quotable war movies.

The acting is great. Seller’s performances are a tour-de-farce. He ad-libbed many of his lines as well as the evil arm stuff. It is unbelievable that he lost the Oscar to Rex Harrison of “My Fair Lady”! The cast is uniformly grand in its ability to keep a straight face throughout (the same could not be said for the crew, from what I have read). Slim Pickens is memorable as the B-52 pilot and he gets one of the most famous movie shots when he rides a nuclear bomb. Pickens was brought in when Sellers could not play the role. John Wayne and Dan Blocker turned down the role. Pickens was not told the movie was a comedy, but I’m sure he figured it out when that shot was made. The role boosted Pickens salaries a lot. The directing is outstanding, as is to be expected from Kubrick. He wanted Scott’s Turgidson to be over the top, so he conned Scott into doing takes where he overacted and then he used those takes.

The film targets several Cold War issues, like the supposed “missile gap” and the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Although the concept of a “doomsday  weapon” was invented for the film, it was the kind of idea that viewers would have thought was really true. The movie also satirizes hawks in the military. Turgidson and Ripper are clearly inspired by the head of the Strategic Air Command, Gen. Curtis LeMay. It is safe to say he did not enjoy the movie. In fact there were people in the government and the military that considered the film to be anti-American.

ACCURACY: The screenplay is based on a novel and thus is not based on any incident from the Cold War. As far as we know, there was never any accidental launch of a nuclear attack. Plus the scenario that exists in the movie with a rogue general ordering bombers to proceed into Russia was impossible because of safeguards put in by the civilian-controlled government. Only the President could give launch orders. There were some scary moments, but they were due to technology errors, not human errors. The Hot Line was only used once, and not because of a nuclear incident.

The movie is realistic in many aspects. Mutually Assured Destruction was the policy of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., so a single nuclear strike even by accident could have triggered a massive retaliation that would have ended life as we know it. Although there was no “Doomsday Machine”, there were literally thousands of ICBMs that would have brought doom, including 100 megaton behemoths in the Soviet arsenal.

We did have B-52s on alert throughout the 60s including some that were always airborne just in case. By the way, although the Air Force understandably gave no assistance to Kubrick, he was able to create a mock-up of the inside of a B-52 that was quite accurate. The idea that they would have been sent on a preemptive strike is far-fetched, but the probable reaction of the President (especially a Democrat) is spot on. I can envision the President using the “Hot Line” to apologize and help shoot down our own planes. Having the military leadership argue for taking advantage of the situation also seems logical, albeit stereotypical.

Since the movie was released there has been an ongoing debate about who each of the main characters is based on. Dr. Strangelove appears to be an amalgam of Nazi scientist Werner Von Braun who helped develop our space program and Edward Teller who is considered to be the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb and was not totally against its use. Pres. Muffley behaves like you would have expected an Adlai Stevenson to have behaved under similar circumstances. Scott could be channeling Curtis Lemay in his portrayal of Turgidson.

Two seemingly made up ideas in the movie are actually accurate. The John Birch Society of the 1960s pushed the idea of fluoridation of water being a Communist plot. Believe it or not, there actually is a condition called “alien hand syndrome” (sometimes called “Dr. Strangelove syndrome”) that causes a person to lose control of their right arm!

CONCLUSION: “Dr. Strangelove” is a masterpiece that satirizes a scary situation that kept people awake at night. By the time it was made, Americans and Russians were aware that an accident or a misunderstanding could result in a devastating nuclear war. There was nervous laughter in the theaters during the early scenes and then it dawned on most viewers that they were watching high level humor. It was not just a movie a war comedy that wanted people to leave the theater smiling. It aimed at a message. That message was the idea that you could win a nuclear war was lunacy.