№1: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Peter Bull, Slim Pickens, and James Earl Jones.
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (the longest title of any film nominated for an Academy Award) is my favourite film. The premise is wholly original: A US Airforce General, Jack D. Ripper, believes that the Soviets have made him impotent via mass fluoridation of drinking water. In response to this monstrous conspiracy, he launches a nuclear attack on the Soviets without Presidential authorisation.
Stanley Kubrick (directing his seventh feature film) inspires some of the best performances in motion picture history. Peter Sellers is in the lead, playing three characters — an Royal Airforce squadron leader, Lionel Mandrake, the Trumanesque President Merkin Muffley, and the titular Dr Strangelove. He was also slated to play B-52 pilot Major T.J Kong , but faked a broken leg to get out of playing the role. Sellers’ brilliance does not overshadow the other performances, however. George C. Scott, as the hawkish General ‘Buck’ Turgidson, Sterling Hayden as General Ripper, and Peter Bull, as the Soviet Ambassador — all are incredible.
What makes Dr Strangelove so brilliant? In simple terms, it is wickedly clever film. It is a study in communication break-down. A sophisticated rendering of the thermonuclear dilemma. And a subtle presentation of Freudian theories — suggesting that violence is a cover for the sexual insecurities of the players — all of whom are male (with the exception of Buck Turgidson’s secretary). It is a film made even more extraordinary by the fact that it was made at the height of the Cold War, a mere two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In terms of visual style, Kubrick dwells on his medium and wide shots. He uses the long take (‘the oner’) to good effect too. The gun-battles are impressively shot in the style of a combat documentary. In contrast, the scenes aboard the B-52 are procedural, yet alive with tension, as we count-down the minutes to nuclear apocalypse. With the film’s centrepiece set — the war-room — Kubrick wanted to give the impression that the characters were playing “a game of poker for the fate of the world.” The room was designed as a cavernous bomb shelter featuring a large roundtable topped with green baize (although, the film is shot in black and white). It is a masterpiece in production design.
Concluding Thoughts
Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove endures as the greatest black comedy/political satire ever made. In one of the great travesties of modern cinema, it was beaten out by the objectively inferior, My Fair Lady, for Best Picture in 1964.
A film too good for an Academy Award, I guess.
A Scene from the Picture
I have chosen this exchange between President Muffley and Soviet Premier Dimitri Kisov. Sellers improvises the entire conversation. “Well now, what happened is… ahm… one of our base commanders, he had a sort of… well, he went a little funny in the head… you know… just a little… funny.”
