Dr. Strangelove
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"Incontestable winner of both the Best Film and Best British Film BAFTA Awards in 1965, this is the gold standard for black comedy. Kubrick’s masterpiece mixes all the paranoia of the day—plus an iconic performance by Peter Sellers in 3 roles!—into a hilarious, deadly cocktail and watches it go boom."
— MUBI's take
Dr. Strangelove
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1989.
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 "Gentlemen. You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, more commonly known simply as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 black comedy film that satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. The film was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick and stars Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens. Production took place in the United Kingdom. The film is loosely based on Peter George's thriller novel Red Alert (1958).
Plot
An American Brigadier puts the world on the verge of a nuclear catastrophe, when he deploys a B-52 bomber on the Russians, without informing his superiors.
Why It Rocks
- Back in the 1950s and 60s, the threat of nuclear annihilation was a very real possibility, and nuclear gamesmanship became a preoccupation for director Stanley Kubrick, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He was especially interested in a 1958 thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George, which introduced a delusional air force officer who tries to instigate a nuclear war with Russia. When writing the screenplay, Kubrick eventually decided to tell the story as a (black) comedy, as while researching he the world of thermonuclear war and the accidental ways in which one might start, he found that many of the possibilities were so preposterous as to be comical.
- The film remains fresh and relevant because of that satirical approach, which makes it as much a wry commentary on war, those who wage it, and the military machine in general as it is a reflection of the paranoia of a specific era. It’s also still relevant because not only could much of its scenario really have happened in 1964, but the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation is still possible.
- The heart of the picture's humor lies in its tension between reality and absurdity, starting with the title sequence where day military planes engage in midair refueling to the strains of “Try a Little Tenderness,” with unmistakable and hilarious sexual overtones.
- There's also members of an active bomber crew doing card tricks, reading Playboy, and trading an air-force helmet for a cowboy hat, all with deadpan seriousness. Scenes of ground combat outside the air base are shot newsreel-style and are not funny in and of themselves, though the scenes inside the base between Peter Sellers and Sterling Hayden reach the height of black comedy. The film shifts from chilling reality to crazy satire and back again. The movie’s deadpan tone has influenced countless modern filmmakers from the Coen Brothers to Quentin Tarantino.
- Aside from being drawn to the ironies of how viewers could root for the crew of a B-52 to simultaneously succeed and fail, Kubrick also energized with the possibility of juggling three separate story lines at once.
- Peter Sellers performs three different roles in the film shockingly well
- Group Captain Lionel Mandrake is a by-the-book British officer psychologically damaged by an injury from World War II
- President Merkin Muffley is an Adlai Stevenson type; the film's blandly rational voice of reason
- and the titular Dr. Strangelove is a crippled crypto-Fascist with a voice modeled from famous photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig.
- Some of the other actors play their roles well too.
- Slim Pickles, a mainstay of Hollywood, played B-52 fighter jet pilot "King" Kong without a trace of irony – exactly what the part needed
- George C. Scott, was manipulated by Kubrick into giving an over-the-top performance.
- It's filled with various enduring moments such as
- Jack D. Ripper about a Communist plot “to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids”
- Turgidson taking a phone call from his mistress in the middle of a vital war meeting to the president admonishing, “Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
- The cockpit of the B-52 was constructed from photos the art director found, with the exterior of the plane being a series of models filmed over second unit footage. Production designer Ken Adam’s magnificent war room set is as much a star of the picture as Peter Sellers. The idea was to make it feel like an underground bomb shelter, with the reinforced concrete walls and ceiling—along with an overall triangular shape—projecting strength and rigidity. The table at the center was made circular so as to resemble a poker table. And Kubrick's desire for as much practical source light as possible inspired Adam to design the round light fixture that hangs above the table and indeed provides most of the scene’s lighting. The light ring, as well as the dramatic “big board,” an electronic map of the world taking up massive inclined walls, make the room feel practically claustrophobic.
- Kubrick also borrows effects from outside sources. The opening credits play over stock footage of refueling planes, closing with stock footage as well. He adds an extra veneer of reality by using brand names such as Coca-Cola and Bell Telephone. A narration adopts the tone of a serious, government-sponsored piece of propaganda; footage inside the B-52 could have been taken from a military training film. An attack on an airfield is shot with handheld telephoto lenses that mimic battleground documentaries—or reports to come from Vietnam. Whatever his influences, Kubrick’s technique is extraordinary through the film. He shows an explosion inside an airplane with eight shots in ten seconds, allowing the soundtrack to distort and the film stock to flare before adding a tracking shot that pulls viewers into the action, letting them sense what is happening even if they don’t absorb all the details. It’s a sequence filmmakers are still copying.
- Dr. Strangelove left an enormous impact on comperatory viewers. While certain viewers may be amused by the smutty names and jokes about orgasms, the film’s best parts move with the inexorable drive of Paths of Glory, and the deadpan brilliance of a Buster Keaton short.
- The film showcases the insanity of a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, while never bogging down into the particulars of right and wrong, or United States vs. Russia
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