Different perspectives about the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick’s movie named Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
In this analysis we will be focusing on the opening scene of Dr. Strangelove. We are hearing that the phone is ringing in a room full with computers and recorders. Captain Mandrake walks across to the frame and we see that at the wall there is a sign reads ‘Peace is Our Profession.’ He walks over, sits down and starts to talk with General Ripper.
This scene is important because it is totally unconnected with the beginning of the movie which we’ve seen airplanes. Thus, we can consider it as a departure from previous scenes. Additionally, previous scene has horizontal bases while this one contains vertical compositions. Basically, the director is telling us that the movie is started and there is something important going on.
More importantly about this scene, is that everything is focused. We can see that Mandrake is always in the frame as camera moving. Even the sound is focused, because we hear him walking. He is always the first thing to be watched in whole scene.
Yet again, this whole scene is a part of the next scene which General Ripper and Mandrake speaking on the phone. In the next scene we see a man, General Ripper sitting at a desk in a dark room and talking on the phone. They talk around 100 seconds. We hear the sound of Mandrake too; but his is kind of fuzzy because we hear him from the phone.
Just like the previous scene everything is focused. The wide angle camera lens makes room huge. Contrast to the previous scene, the room is very dark. We see five pictures on the wall and one of them is screaming as ‘Peace is Our Profession.’ Ripper is smoking a huge cigar.
In the both scene we see that camera seeing characters in a medium height. Also, both contains straight cut.
We see many laps between characters as they speak. Just like they mentioned in a documentary named ‘Cutting Edge’, they try to give the tragicomic sense of the war. With these laps and calm voices which talks about a serious issue, we are being pushed to think about egos of men who see combat as an aphrodisiac. It is darkly funny! Also, as mentioned in the documentary, there is not a continuous shooting. Hence, just like Eisenstein they try to remind us that it a movie.
We took this both scenes as one, because just like Lev Kuleshov’s works, scenes are being meaningful as they being watched in line. We have learned from Cutting Edge is that if a director cuts a scene unexpectedly, it means that he wants you to think about the scene. Yet again, after they close the phone, same act continues. So, we can syllogize that still something important is going on.
‘Peace is Our Profession.’ is a pivotal point. We can refer it as Kubrick trying to mock with awkwardness of war. On the other hand, there is nothing more reckless than men who fight defending peace. Therefore, he mocks with General Ripper too as picturing him with a huge cigar. Cigar represents his ego and it is really huge!
It is a dark comedy movie that wants us to consider our perspective about war. Kubrick wanted to think about again again again and again about our sense of funny and terrifying.
