Dr. Strangelove
| Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | |
|---|---|
| File:DrstrangeloveCover.jpg | |
| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Written by | Terry Southern, Stanley Kubrick (based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George) |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Starring | Peter Sellers George C. Scott Sterling Hayden Keenan Wynn Slim Pickens |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates | January 29, 1964 |
Running time | 94 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,800,000 |
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a 1964 Stanley Kubrick film based loosely upon the straight-faced thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George. Refashioned as a black comedy from the source material by screenwriter Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove's subject matter satirizes the fragile nature of the Cold War conflict and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The film opens at the fictional Burpelson Air Force Base, where the insane General Jack D. Ripper has just ordered a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The rest of Dr. Strangelove follows the American President and his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a RAF officer as they all scramble to recall Ripper's bomb-wing in order to prevent a nuclear Apocalypse.
Cast and crew
Dr. Strangelove stars British actor/comedian Peter Sellers, who actually improvised much of his dialogue during filming. Sellers plays three roles:
- Group Captain Lionel Mandrake—the sane, well-meaning, "by-the-book" British exchange officer with an upper-class English accent. It is said that Sellers' experience mimicking his uptight superiors as an RAF airman during World War II aided him in creating this character.
- President Merkin Muffley—the Adlai Stevenson-esque American Commander in Chief—a decent, but flustered and spineless character. The President's first and last name each crudely imply that he is a pussy by nature ("merkin" and "muff" are both slang words for the female genitalia). This fundemental quality becomes evident during the famous Hotline scene, in which he seems overly cautious in dealing with Soviet Premier Dmitri Kisof. For the role, Sellers flattened his natural English accent to sound like an American Midwesterner (another reference to Stevenson, who was from Illinois), and faked cold symptoms to further add to the character's inherent weakness.
- Dr. Strangelove—the sinister German title-character—an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, Nazi-turned-NASA rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, "father of the hydrogen bomb" Edward Teller, and JFK's Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. Henry Kissinger has also been cited as one of the Strangelove character's influences. However, this assertion is highly unlikely, as Kissinger was not a prominent figure in American politics at the time of the film's production. Dr. Strangelove serves as President Muffley's scientific advisor in the War Room, presumably making use of prior expertise as a Nazi physicist. The accent used by Sellers is reportedly based on that of Weegee (pseudonymn of Austrian photographer Arthur Fellig), who was hired by Kubrick as a special effects consultant. Throughout the film, the speeches made by the character of Dr. Strangelove are interrupted by his erratic fits of alien hand syndrome. At one point, Strangelove's hand reaches out in an attempt to strangle his neck; at another it thrusts itself out in a Nazi salute. Strangelove's sinister black glove was actually Kubrick's, Sellers saw Kubrick using it to handle the hot lights on the set one day and thought it would be a good addition to his costume.
At the start of Dr. Strangelove 's production, Sellers was set to play a fourth role; that of Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber captain. However, Sellers fractured his leg during filming, and was prevented from playing the role because of a technical constraint that would have confined him to cramped space of the cockpit set. It has been suggested that Sellers, who was concerned about correctly reproducing the Texan accent required, contrived the injury—or at least exaggerated it to make it seem worse than it really was. As fate would have it, Slim Pickens, a real-life Texan, was quickly tapped to replace Sellers as Major Kong. It is no coincidence that his performance turned out so authentic; fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, "He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperenment, his language, his behavior." For the entire course of filming, Pickens was apparently unaware that Strangelove was to be a comedy, and instead played the role straight, thereby adding to the humor. Kubrick biographer John Baxter further explains in the documentary "Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove":
As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, "Gosh, he's arrived in costume!," not realizing that that's how he always dressed… With the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked.
Also appearing in the film is George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, a strategic bombing enthusiast who serves as the thinly-disguised avatar of General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff who advocated for a preeminent strike against bases in Cuba during the Missile Crisis of 1962, much to Kennedy's disagreement. Sterling Hayden plays General Jack D. Ripper; a young James Earl Jones plays bombardier Lieutenant Lothar Zogg; Keenan Wynn plays a Colonel "Bat" Guano, and Tracy Reed plays Gen. Turgidson's seductive secretary Miss Scott, the film's only female character.
Photography: Gilbert Taylor
Editor: Anthony Harvey
Production design: Ken Adam
Special effects: Wally Veevers
Synopsis
Template:Spoiler Jack D. Ripper, a delusional US Air Force general, plans to strike the Soviet Union with a nuclear knockout blow in order to thwart a Communist conspiracy which threatens to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with mind-controlling fluoridated water. Exceeding his authority, he convinces everyone at Burpelson Air Force Base that the United States is in a "shooting war" with the Soviet Union, and orders the 843rd Bomb Wing (which was in the air at the time as part of a training exercise called "Operation Dropkick") past its fail-safe points and into Russia. The provisions of a military protocol known as "Plan R" ('R for Robert') allows lower-echelon commanders to authorize the use of nuclear weapons without Presidential authority during a "time of conflict." It was apparently put in place after a certain Senator by the name of Buford pointed out that the nuclear deterrence plan of the United States lacked crediblity.
From the script:
- Ripper: Mandrake, I suppose it never occurred to you that while we're chatting here so enjoyably, a decision is being made by the President and the Joint Chiefs in the war room at the Pentagon. And when they realize there is no possibility of recalling the wing, there will be only one course of action open: total committment... Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
- Mandrake: No. I don't think I do sir, no.
- Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the Generals. When he said that, fifty years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist Infiltration, Communist Indoctrination, Communist Subversion, and the international Communist Conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
General Ripper is unaware that the Soviets have constructed a so-called "doomsday device" which automatically detects any nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, whereupon it destroys all life on Earth via massive nuclear fallout. Dr. Strangelove explains to the staff assembled in the American war room how the device is a natural extension to the Cold War stratagem of mutually assured destruction as a deterrent to an actual nuclear exchange. Moreover, the machine cannot be turned off as this would mitigate its value as a deterrent.
As a result, the American government cooperates with the Soviets to shoot the General's planes down until they can be recalled, and Ripper's plan is ultimately foiled by British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, an officer participating in an "exchange program" with the USAF, who deduces the recall code from Ripper's childish doodles.
Unfortunately, one B-52 ("The Leper Colony") was damaged, but not destroyed, by a Soviet anti-aircraft missile. With its radio disabled, it cannot be called back; and with a fuel leak, it also cannot reach its intended target, the Laputa Missile Complex, where the remaining Soviet defenses have been concentrated. So the plane continues its mission to drop its nuclear payload on a new Soviet target (now selecting the Kodlosk ICBM complex, not the plane's secondary target but still within the plane's range), which will in turn set off the doomsday machine. The particular bomb is jammed in its bay, and in trying to release it, the pilot of the B-52, Major "King" Kong (in one of Hollywood's most memorable film moments) inadvertently ends up riding it down to global destruction — with Kong cheering all the way. Kong straddles the bomb, gripping it with one hand and waving his cowboy hat in the air with his other in a homage to rodeo bullriding technique.
The doomsday device is activated. According to the Soviet ambassador, life on Earth's surface will be extinct within ten months; Dr. Strangelove recommends to the President that a group of about 100,000 humans be relocated to deep in a mine shaft, where the nuclear fallout cannot reach, so the Earth can be repopulated. Because of obvious limits to space in the mines, Strangelove suggests that the ratio of females to males be 10:1. The chosen women would be selected based on their youth and beauty (to ensure the males would want to impregnate them), while the chosen males would be selected based on their intellectual and physical strength. Turgidson rants that they "cannot allow a mine shaft gap" (spoofing the missile gap fears) and begins planning a war for when they emerge in a hundred years. Strangelove eventually gets out of his wheelchair shouting "Mein Führer, I can walk!" a mere second before the doomsday bombs begin exploding. Template:Endspoiler
Themes
Although it is a comedy, Dr. Strangelove is also suspenseful and engrossing and not the least "madcap". Two major scenes of action are the immense War Room dominated by the Big Board showing the location of every American bomber in the world, and the meticulous B-52 interior. The remainder is set in General Ripper's headquarters at Burpleson Air Force Base.
The Pentagon did not cooperate in making the film, as it did in making Strategic Air Command (1955). Because the B-52 was state of the art in the 1960s, its cockpit was off limits to the film crew; the cockpit was reconstructed by educated guesses made in comparing the interior of a B-29 Superfortress's cockpit and a single photo of a B-52 Stratofortress's cockpit to the geometry of the B-52's fuselage; it was so accurate that the Department of Defense suspected the film crew of sneaking into a B-52 and taking pictures.
Dr. Strangelove takes passing shots at all sorts of Cold War attitudes, but focuses its satire on the theory of mutual assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to take comfort in the fact that a nuclear war would be a cataclysmic disaster. Herman Kahn in his 1960 On Thermonuclear War invented the concept of a doomsday machine in order to mock mutually assured destruction — in effect, Kahn argued, both sides already had a sort of doomsday machine. Kahn was a leading critic of American strategy during the 1950s and urged Americans to plan for a limited nuclear war. Kahn became one of the architects of the MAD doctrine in the 1960s. The prevailing thinking that a nuclear war was inherently unwinnable and suicidal was illogical to the physicist turned strategist. Kahn came off as cold and calculating; for instance, in his works, he estimated how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically. This attitude is reflected in Turgidson's remark to the president about the outcome of a pre-emptive nuclear war: "Now I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I am saying no more than 10 to 20 million killed. Tops!" In the War Room, Turgidson also has a binder which is labeled “World Targets in Megadeaths”.
It satirizes the conventions of Hollywood war movies, as well as the curious "red telephone" relationship between heads of state, in which a first-name intimacy competes with a culturally conditioned dislike for the other and for the entire political system which he heads:
- "I'm sorry, too, Dimitri. ... I'm very sorry. ... All right, you're sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well. ... I am as sorry as you are, Dimitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are. ... So we're both sorry, all right?! ... All right." (Dialog improvised by Sellers)
The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is a comment on the US government's morally questionable use of Nazi scientists in programs such as nuclear weapons research. Dr. Strangelove, played by Peter Sellers, retains a thick German accent, and mistakenly calls the President "Mein Führer" on more than one occasion. His appearance echoes the villains of the Fritz Lang era in 1920s Germany whose sinister and evil characters were usually offset by some disability. Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the Sieg heil gesture. Sellers found the director's gloves that Kubrick perpetually wore to avoid direct contact with hot lights to be especially menacing. The thought of the new, post-war centrally controlled, underground, male-dominated society with its members specially selected from the population is evocative of Nazi visions and animates Dr. Strangelove at the end.
Also, the film is sprinkled with many sly sex jokes. For example: the long opening scene of a bomber being fueled mid-flight from a long pipe, accompanied by romantic music; the classic image of Slim Pickens straddling the nuclear bomb in ecstasy; and the final montage of multiple nuclear explosions. Foreshadowing the idea of "missile envy" in later decades, it suggests that the Cold War's obsession with nuclear weapons might at least partially be a silly and immature contest of perceived sexual prowess and phallic fixations.
The movie is based upon the Cold War thriller novel Red Alert. Stanley Kubrick had originally wanted to film the story as a serious drama. However, he explained during interviews that the comedy inherent in the idea of MAD became apparent as he was writing the first draft of the film's script. Kubrick stated:
- "My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question." — Macmillan International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, vol. 1, p. 126
Ending
Template:Spoiler The planned original ending to the film was a chaotic pie-fight scene with the Soviet ambassador in the war room. It was cut from the final print and the film ends with Strangelove stepping out of his wheelchair (saying, "Mein Führer, I can walk!") right before a montage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's singing of the WWII standard "We'll Meet Again". Reportedly, Spike Milligan was responsible for suggesting the montage ending. Template:Endspoiler
Critical views
Dr. Strangelove is currently #18 on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, and was also listed as #26 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies and #3 on its 100 Years, 100 Laughs. Sellers' line "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!" made #64 on AFI's 100 Years, 100 Quotes. The film has also been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedy film of all time.
Roger Ebert has Dr. Strangelove in his list of Great Movies[1], saying it's "arguably the best political satire of the century."
Fail-Safe and Seven Days in May
Dr. Strangelove was based on the paperback novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George. George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and satirist Terry Southern. Red Alert was far more solemn in tone than its film version; the character of Dr. Strangelove never even existed on its pages. The main plot and technical elements, however, were quite similar. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a re-print of the original novel, was later penned by Peter George.
During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail-Safe, a project with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail-Safe was to be an ultra-realistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its overall plot resemblances would damage Strangelove's box office run, especially if were to be released first. What worried him the most about Fail-Safe was that it boasted an acclaimed director (Sidney Lumet) and first-rate dramatic actors (Henry Fonda as the American President and Walter Matthau as the bold civilian advisor to the Pentagon, Professor Groeteschele). As an ever-cunning strategist, Kubrick decided that it would be in Strangeloves 's best interest for a legal wrench to be thrown into the gears of Fail-Safe's production efforts. Director Sidney Lumet recalls in the documentary, "Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove":
We started casting. Fonda was already set... which of course meant a big commitment in terms of money. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set... And suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures.
Kubrick tried to halt production on Fail-Safe by arguing that its own 1960 source novel of the same name had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, to which Kubrick himself owned the creative rights. The plan ended up working exactly as Kubrick intended; Fail-Safe opened a full eight months behind Dr. Strangelove to critical acclaim, but mediocre box office results.
Also released in 1964 was Warner Brothers' Seven Days in May. The plot involves a coup attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prevent the President of the United States from signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, who they believe cannot be trusted.
The Kennedy assassination
A first test screening of the movie was actually scheduled to be on November 22, 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere. The release was delayed until late January 1964 as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.
Additionally, one line by Slim Pickens ("a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff") was dubbed to become "in Vegas". The dub is just barely visible if Pickens' lips are watched closely when he speaks.
Additionally, the climactic pie-fight scene was scripted to include General Turgidson exclaiming, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!" after Muffley takes a pie in the face. While the pie fight was filmed but cut, this line, no matter how coincidental, would have hit too close to home to be used.
Songs
- An instrumental version of "Try a Little Tenderness", a sentimental pop song from the 1930s, is played during the opening titles sequence which features shots of aerial refueling of a B52 bomber.
- "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye", Irish traditional anti-war song. Instrumental version used to accompany the B-52 flight.
- "We'll Meet Again" sung by Vera Lynn, optimistic, sentimental World War II song, played as the bombs explode at the end of the film.
- Mandrake suspects that all is not as it seems, when he turns on an unconfiscated radio and hears pop music when there should be Civil Defense alerts, but the music itself is anonymous.
Trivia
- In several shots of the B-52 flying over the polar ice en route to Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, is visible on the snow below. The B-52 was a model composited into the arctic footage which was sped up to create a (quite unconvincing) sense of jet speed. The camera ship, a former USAAF B-17G-100-VE, serial 44-85643, registered F-BEEA, had been one of four Flying Forts purchased from salvage at Altus, Oklahoma in December 1947 by the French Institut Geographique National and converted for survey and photo-mapping duty. It was the last active B-17 of a total of fourteen once operated by the IGN, but it was destroyed in a take-off accident at RAF Binbrook in 1989 during filming of the movie "Memphis Belle." Home movie footage included in "Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove" on the 2001 Special Edition DVD release of the film show clips of the Fortress with a cursive "Dr. Strangelove" painted over the rear entry hatch on the right side of the fuselage.
- The nuclear explosions at the end of the film are all of actual US nuclear tests. Many of them were shot at Bikini Atoll, and old warships (such as the German Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser) expended as targets are plainly visible. In others the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop on the sky behind the explosion can be seen.
- In the novelisation, the "mineshaft" survival technique succeeded, at least for a while, as the story is said to have been reconstructed from documents found at the bottom of deep mineshafts.
- During the filming, Stanley Kubrick and George C. Scott had differences of opinions regarding certain scenes. However, Kubrick got Scott to conform based largely upon his ability to beat Scott at chess (which they played frequently on the set). In the end, Scott was extremely displeased with Kubrick's work methods and with the (purposely) overacted performance he got out of him, and swore to never work with him again.
- The photographic mural in General Ripper's office, presumably showing an aerial view of Burpelson AFB, is actually a view of Heathrow Airport, London.
- The line "I can walk" given by Peter Sellers in this film is repeated by Sellers in Revenge of the Pink Panther when he has to walk on his knees in his Toulouse-Lautrec disguise.
Popular Culture References
- The popular television series The Simpsons contains several references to Dr. Strangelove. Here are only a few examples:
- In the episode "Homer the Vigilante", Homer Simpson rides a bomb à la Major Kong
- The episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" features a 'war room', and Sideshow Bob whistles "We’ll Meet Again"
- The episode "$pringfield (or, How I learned to stop worrying and love legalized gambling)" is an obvious parody of the title.
- General Turgidson appears in Treehouse of Horror XIII, again in Mayor Quimby's war room. Professor Frink can be seen as Dr. Strangelove.
- In Dr. Strangelove, the CRM-114 is the nomenclature of the Strategic Air Command encryption/decryption device aboard the B-52 Stratofortress. This has been referenced:
- In an episode of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the characters make refer to a powerful laser cannon called the 'CRM-114'.
- In yet another Stanley Kubrick movie "A Clockwork Orange" the serum which is given to the main character during the so-called "Lodovico treatment" is called 'CRM-114'.
- In the first scene of Back to the Future, Marty McFly switches an amplifier with the words 'CRM-114' printed on it.
- The CRM114 Discriminator is the name of a data stream analyzer (think SPAM filter) which achieves very high accuracy based on a "learning" algorithm.
- In the 2005 film Fun with Dick and Jane a financial transaction form is referred to as a 'CRM-114'.
- The film inspired the nickname "Dr. Strangeglove" for Boston Red Sox slugger Dick Stuart, a first baseman notorious for fielding his position poorly.
- The 1998 film Deep Impact discussed preparations for surviving a massive asteroid strike upon the Earth, and mineshafts are drafted into service for this reason, in an echo of the survival plan in "Dr. Strangelove." Additionally, a lottery system is proposed for selection of candidates for survival, much like that proposed by Dr. Strangelove himself.
- In 1965 Science fiction author Philip K. Dick released a novel about a post apocalyptic society Titled Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. This was not the originaly intended title, but was suggested by his publisher to coincide with the popularity of the Kubrick film.
- Several video games reference various elements from Dr. Strangelove:
- The character of Sellers in Xenosaga appears to be based off Dr. Strangelove. He rides a (futuristic) wheelchair, wears dark sunglasses, and somewhat physically resembles actor Peter Sellers.
- There is a modification available for Unreal Tournament called Strangelove which allows the player to ride "The Redeemer," a small nuclear weapon, around the game, much like Major Kong.
- In Starcraft, the race of aliens known as the Zerg are described as having a "purity of essence". This could be a reference to the "purity" and "essence" of "bodily fluids" that General Ripper describes.
- One of the "post save" talks between Naked Snake and Para-Medic in Metal Gear Solid 3 concernes the movie and how she concidered it a brilliant black comedy with a good message about the atom bomb.
- An abandoned Lunar base in Shane Johnson's Christian science fiction novel Ice is described as containing one with a War Room quite similar to the room depicted in Dr. Strangelove, causing one character in that novel to remark specifically on the similarity.
- In the 1987 movie Raising Arizona, the letters "P.O.E." and "O.P.E." are spray-painted on the door of a public restroom. These are the letters from the recall code, meaning "Peace on Earth," as written in General Ripper's notes.
See also
- Slim Pickens for listing of the survival pack
- Films that have been considered the greatest ever
External links
