Fail-Safe (1964 film)

Fail-Safe
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Sidney Lumet
Produced by	Sidney Lumet Charles H. Maguire Max E. Youngstein
Written by	Walter Bernstein
Starring	Henry Fonda Dan O'Herlihy Walter Matthau Frank Overton
Cinematography	Gerald Hirschfeld
Editing by	Ralph Rosenblum
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	October 7, 1964
Running time	112 minutes
Language	English

Fail-Safe is a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. It tells the story of a fictional Cold War nuclear crisis. The film features an all star cast, including Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, and early appearances by Fritz Weaver, Dom DeLuise and Larry Hagman.

Plot

During the Cold War, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union are at their height. At the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), where visiting Congressman Raskob (Sorrell Booke) is expressing his discomfort with how much of the U.S. defense system is automated without direct human responsibility, an unidentified object is detected approaching North America from Europe. With such incidents a common occurrence, standard procedure is invoked, deploying American fighter aircraft to meet the potential threat. According to routine, American strategic bombers are directed to fly to various predetermined "fail-safe" points outside the borders of the Soviet Union, where they are to remain until receiving either orders to return to base or a special attack code transmitted through an electronic "fail-safe" box in each group commander's bomber.

As is usual, the original "threat" is proven to be innocuous, and orders are issued to have the American bombers recalled. However, the SAC computer system experiences a technical failure which causes a valid attack code to be electronically transmitted to one of the bomber groups. Colonel Jack Grady (Edward Binns), commanding the bomber group, attempts to contact SAC to confirm the order, but is unable to do so, as the group's radio transmissions are being jammed by the Soviets. Having received a valid attack code, and with no known contrary orders, he proceeds with the group's designated attack mission: to drop thermonuclear bombs on Moscow.

Realizing what has occurred, but still unable to communicate with the bombers, American military commanders advise the President of the United States (Henry Fonda) of the situation and urgently invoke measures to avert the attack. After a failed attempt to send American fighter jets to shoot down the bombers, the President contacts the Soviet Chairman to warn him of the growing danger to Moscow and offer American assistance in shooting down the bomber group. The Soviets, both prideful and somewhat suspicious of possible American deception, refuse the help. However, having underestimated the bombers' speed, they are also unable to shoot them down.

With the likelihood increasing that at least one of the bombers will make it to Moscow, the Soviets admit that their jamming has prevented SAC from contacting the bomber group by radio. An American hypothesis is that in addition to preventing them from countermanding the attack order, this Soviet jamming may also have contributed to triggering the mechanical failure at SAC, which caused the transmission of the attack code in the first place. Like the American attack order, the Soviet decision to initiate the jamming had been neither made nor authorized by any human being. Instead, it had been done automatically when computer algorithms, employing what the Chairman calls "their own logic", for some reason determined that the standard American alert maneuvers might on this occasion be a real attack.

The Soviets lift the jamming, enabling the President to speak to Grady. But by this time, the bombers are well beyond the final point at which they are permitted to accept new orders. The crews have been specifically cautioned about possible Soviet trickery, such as radio communications impersonating the voices of American military commanders. Remaining true to his training, Grady disregards the President's order to stand down.

With the Chairman removing himself from Moscow, the Soviets now accept American aid against the bombers. The President orders all American military personnel to fully cooperate with the Soviets and to supply them with any information requested. Mistrust of the Soviets becomes a problem as American officers have difficulty bringing themselves to freely supply the Soviets with valuable military secrets. In the meantime, the President informs the Soviets of his plan to prove conclusively that the attack upon Moscow is an accident, and thus avert a Soviet retaliation that would lead to all-out nuclear war. If Moscow is destroyed, the President will order an equivalent nuclear strike on New York City.

The cooperative effort between the two nations' military personnel yields some success, eliminating most of the bomber group, but Grady's aircraft alone is able to make it through the Soviet defenses. The Soviets' last hope is to detonate their own airborne nuclear explosions in the vicinity of the American bomber, hoping to knock it out of the sky. But Grady anticipates this tactic and is able to decoy the Soviet surface-to-air rockets far enough away that his bomber is then able to withstand the blast. As this happens, SAC makes one last attempt to verbally dissuade him, this time putting Grady's wife on the radio to try to convince him; he remains resolute. Noting that the last Soviet attack subjected him and his crew to lethal doses of radiation, he now decides to drop his bombs on Moscow from a low enough altitude that the bomber will itself be destroyed in the explosion.

As American officials begin planning the post-impact recovery for New York, the President and the Chairman grimly discuss the estimated several million deaths from the pending annihilation of each country's largest city. The Chairman asserts that it is a tragic accident, with no one truly to blame, but the President argues that both governments must accept responsibility for having "let our machines get out of hand". They resolve that they must do anything necessary to prevent any such incident from ever recurring.

Moscow is destroyed, and the President immediately gives the order to bomb New York. The order is given to Brigadier General Warren Black (Dan O'Herlihy), affectionately known as "Blackie", a personal friend of the President from college—and ironically, one of the military's primary critics of extensive nuclear armament. Black and the President proceed with the plan despite their knowledge that Black's wife and children, as well as the First Lady, are in New York. Upon releasing the bombs that will obliterate the city, Black injects himself with a suicide pin.

Cast

• Henry Fonda—the President
• Dan O'Herlihy—Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black, USAF
• Walter Matthau—Prof. Groeteschele
• Frank Overton—Gen. Bogan, USAF
• Ed Binns—Col. Jack Grady, USAF
• Fritz Weaver—Col. Cascio, USAF
• Larry Hagman—Buck, the President's translator
• William Hansen—Defense Secretary Swenson
• Russell Hardie—Gen. Stark
• Russell Collins—Gordon Knapp
• Sorrell Booke—Congressman Raskob
• Nancy Berg—Ilsa Woolfe
• Dom DeLuise—TSgt. Collins, USAF
• Frieda Altman—Mrs. Jennie Johnson
• Hildy Parks—Betty Black
• Janet Ward—Helen Grady
• Louise Larabee—Mrs. Cascio
• Dana Elcar—Mr. Foster

Production

The film is shot in black and white, in a minimalist, documentary-style format, with claustrophobic close-ups, and long silences between the characters. Absolutely no music is heard in the film, either as underscoring or from a source within the film. With a few exceptions, the action takes place largely in bunkers, conference rooms, and a cockpit. Only in the opening two scenes and in the final street scene depictions of New York in the seconds before it is destroyed do people and animals appear active and "alive" in the normal day-to-day world. The film ends by showing several normal New York street scenes, depicting a city that is entirely unsuspecting at the moment of destruction, with each scene freezing at that moment.

The movie is constructed so that the Soviets are never seen. The action is portrayed almost exclusively on the giant maps overlooking the War Room in the Pentagon and SAC Headquarters, and the Soviet Premier's words are translated by an American interpreter (Larry Hagman). The war room segments feature dialogs between the President and other officials, including the characters Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) and, most important, General Bogan (Frank Overton).

The "Vindicator" bombers (an invention of the novelists) are represented in the film by sometimes awkward stock footage of various real U.S. aircraft, including the Convair B-58 Hustler, as well as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and the Grumman F9F Cougar. Stock footage was used because the United States Air Force would not cooperate with the film's producers due to the risqué subplot and a main plot predicated on fictional Air Force failures.

The film features several unusual scenes. For instance, General Black (Dan O'Herlihy) is bothered in the film's start by a recurring nightmare of a bullfight of which he swears he dreams of constantly and says he knows the matador, the visual representation of which is deliberately blurred and shaky; then, the "Fail-Safe" main title switches starkly back and forth several times between black letters on a white background, and white letters on a black background. (At the end, as he dies, Black whispers out the words "Matador! Me! Me!", realizing that he, now indirectly responsible for millions of deaths after dropping the bomb on New York, is the unseen matador in the dream.) When the bombers and fighters are shown in flight, the soundtrack is sometimes eliminated entirely. At another point, the stock footage of the aircraft is rendered as a photographic negative.

Action messages in real life

One of the necessary plot elements in Fail-Safe is the inability of Colonel Grady's group to hear the correct action message because of Soviet jamming of a digital signal. However, by 1964, the U.S. Air Force used single-sideband radio to transmit Emergency Action Messages to air crews; this has the advantage of not being easily jammed. A theoretical means to jam such signals is a key part of the film's plot. The movie's closing credits are followed by a disclaimer stating that the United States Air Force has protective devices and safeguards that are used all the time to keep the events of the story from happening.

Reception

When Fail-Safe opened, it garnered excellent reviews, but its box-office performance was poor. Its failure rested with the similarity between it and Dr. Strangelove, which appeared in theaters first. Despite this, the film later was applauded as a cold war thriller. Over the years, both the novel and the movie were well-received for their depiction of a nuclear crisis. The novel sold through to the 1980s and 1990s, and the film was given high marks for retaining the essence of the novel.

Lawsuit

The book so closely resembled the novel Red Alert by Peter George (which was adapted by George and Stanley Kubrick into the mutually assured destruction satire Dr. Strangelove the same year), that George filed a plagiarism lawsuit. The case was settled out of court.

Popular culture

Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb were both produced by Columbia Pictures in the period after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when people became much more sensitive to the threat of nuclear war. Strangelove director Stanley Kubrick insisted the studio release his movie first (in January 1964). Strangelove shares many plot similarities with Fail-Safe (and was legally derived from Red Alert, see above), but added black humor and satire to the mix.

The famous 1964 ad Daisy by the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential campaign featured a shot similar to the final one from the movie, with a smash zoom into the face of a young girl playing.

Fail-Safe was parodied on Second City Television which used a Henry Fonda imitation and the countdown montage in the episode "CCCP 1", which revolves around a Soviet hijacking of the network's satellite.

In seventh season episode Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming of the Simpsons, Sideshow Bob threatens to destroy the city of Springfield with a nuclear warhead. When his plan falls apart, he pushes the detonator and subsequent shots show other citizens casually enjoying their day without ever knowing they are close to annihilation, all as an homage to the final shots from "Fail-Safe". Of course, Sideshow Bob's warhead turns out to be a dud, and goes off not with a bang, but a fizzle.

2000 adaptation

In 2000, the novel was adapted again as a televised play also titled Fail Safe, starring George Clooney, Richard Dreyfuss, and Noah Wyle and broadcast live in black and white on CBS.

See also

• By Dawn's Early Light, later book and film with a similar theme

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Dolan Edward F. Jr. Hollywood Goes to War. London: Bison Books, 1985. ISBN 0-86124-229-7.
• Evans, Alun. Brassey's Guide to War Films. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57488-263-5.
• Harwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. "A Viewer's Guide to Aviation Movies". The Making of the Great Aviation Films, General Aviation Series, Volume 2, 1989.
• Lobrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0306809064.

External links

• Fail-Safe at the Internet Movie Database
• Fail-Safe at AllRovi