OR DR. STRANGELOVE: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB Movie Review
1964 Stanley Kubrick
Seen from the perspective that only time can give, Dr. Strangelove now seems almost inevitable. During the coldest days of the Cold War, someone simply had to satirize the paranoia that drove it. But Stanley Kubrick and writers Terry Southern and Peter George did it so brilliantly that their work has improved with repeated viewings over the years. The ultra-deadpan humor and carefully controlled acting have lost nothing, and the three-sided plot could serve as a model for the well-built screenplay.
At Burpelson Strategic Air Command base, Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has gone completely mad. Convinced that all-out war is the only way to defeat an insidious Communist conspiracy—which he explains with chilling mad logic—he has closed the base and ordered his planes to attack the Soviet Union. Gen. “Buck” Turgidson (George C. Scott) is forced to cut short an assignation with his secretary (Tracy Reed) to meet with President Merkin J. Muffley (Peter Sellers) in the Pentagon War Room to deal with Ripper. All the while, with the jaunty strains of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” in the background, Maj. T.J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) pilots his fully loaded B–52 over the arctic wastes in search of his primary target. The wild card is the Soviet's secret “Doomsday Device,” a massive bomb enriched with “Balthorium-G,” which will eliminate all life on the planet for 93 years.
Virtually the entire story is told from those three stages—the base, the bomber, the War Room—and all of them are remarkably realistic. The details of the plane, from the codebooks to the communication equipment and the systems checks, could have been taken from training manuals, and the interior of the bomber feels authentic. In the same way, the attack on the SAC base is filmed with strict realism. The grainy, soft-focus, hand-held black-and-white camera work, reportedly divided between Kubrick himself and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, could have come from a World War II documentary.
That severe understatement is carried over into the acting, too. The ensemble plays these grandly bizarre characters with their crazy names without cracking a single smile. The only overt joke—a brief one involving a Coke machine—seems so horribly out of place that it may have been a comedic beauty mark, included intentionally for contrast. Virtually all of the casting was done against type, and it works. Sterling Hayden lets Ripper's mania unfold slowly and never overplays his hand, not even when he reaches into his golf bag and pulls out a .50 caliber machine gun. At that point in his career, George C. Scott wasn't known as a comedic actor, and though he is much more demonstrative as Gen. Turgidson, he doesn't go for any easy laughs either.
Star Peter Sellers was nominated for an Academy Award and his work has certainly held up as well as, if not better than, the winner's (Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady) . He plays President Muffley as a quietly desperate Adlai Stevenson—school liberal who carefully tucks his handkerchief into his coat sleeve. As Gen. Ripper's executive officer, Group Capt. Mandrake of the RAF, he's the film's real hero—the one character who may be able to stop things. Finally, as the ex-Nazi Presidential advisor Dr. Strangelove (“He changed it from Merkwürdigliebe,” another character mutters), he embodies the rationalization of nuclear madness. His final speech about the necessity of stocking mineshafts with nubile young women for political and military leaders to repopulate the earth is brilliant, and a perfect conclusion for the sexual undercurrent that runs throughout the film.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the satire, though, is the way it combines comedy and suspense. The pace tightens in the third act as the three plotlines converge, and it's difficult not to become involved with the story, no matter how familiar it is. In the end, it's easy to see Dr. Strangelove as a more successful companion piece to Kubrick's Paths of Glory. Both films question authority; both are profoundly anti-military; neither comes to a conventional ending.
Cast: Peter Sellers (Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake/President Merkin Muffley/Dr. Strangelove), George C. Scott (Gen. “Buck” Turgidson), Sterling Hayden (Gen. Jack D. Ripper), Keenan Wynn (Col. “Bat” Guano), Slim Pickens (Maj. T.J. “King” Kong), James Earl Jones (Lt. Lothar Zogg), Peter Bull (Ambassador de Sadesky), Tracy Reed (Miss Scott), Shane Rimmer (Capt. G.A. “Ace” Owens), Glenn Beck (Lt. W.D. Kivel), Gordon Tanner (Gen. Faceman), Frank Berry (Lt. H.R. Dietrich), Jack Creley (Mr. Staines); Written by: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George; Cinematography by: Gilbert Taylor; Music by: Laurie Johnson; Technical Advisor: Capt. John Crewdson. Producer: Stanley Kubrick, Victor Lyndon, Leon Minoff, Columbia Pictures. British. Awards: American Film Institute (AFI) '98: Top 100; British Academy Awards '64: Best Film, National Film Registry '89; New York Film Critics Awards '64: Best Director (Kubrick); Nominations: Academy Awards '64: Best Actor (Sellers), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director (Kubrick), Best Picture. Running Time: 93 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Letterbox, DVD.