Stanley Kubrick once observed, "A really great picture has a delirious quality in which you're constantly searching for meanings." On that basis as well as others, Kubrick's monumental Dr. Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb qualifies is a really great picture. It often appears on lists of the hundred greatest films ever, including that of the American Film Institute. I have personally listed it on two of my lists as the greatest film ever made in the U.K. Surely that could be disputed, but there's no disputing that it's my personal favorite British film. And it is a British film, even if it deals primarily with issues quintessentially American.

Historical Background: Stanley Kubrick was born in 1928 in the Bronx, N.Y. and died in 1999. His father was a physician. As a boy, Kubrick took up photography as a hobby and when he turned seventeen, he went to work for Look magazine as a staff photographer. He fell in love with cinema while in high school and quit his job at Look in 1950 in order to pursue his dream of making films. His first film was a documentary entitled Day of the Fight (1950). He made his first feature film, Fear and Desire, three years later, using money borrowed from friends and relatives. Kubrick wrote, directed, shot, and edited the film – everything, in fact, except the acting. In 1954, he formed a production company with James B. Harris. The first film under this new arrangement was The Killing (1954), starring Sterling Hayden. Next came Kubrick's breakout film: Paths of Glory (1957). It established Kubrick as the most promising director of his generation. Still, he was having better success among critics than at the box office.

Kubrick's first commercial success came in 1960, when he took over a high-budget epic, Spartacus, midstream. The result was rather typical Hollywood fare, though better than average. Kubrick decided he would move to London in search of opportunity and greater artistic latitude. His next project, Lolita, an adaptation of a novel by Nabokov and a U.S./U.K. co-production, brought him back to America for the shooting. This controversial film about an instance of pedophilia brought Kubrick into conflict with the Moral Decency League. All the while Kubrick was also developing a reputation as an enfant terrible among directors, sometimes having stormy relationships with cast or crew members and maintaining diabolical control over every aspect of the filmmaking process. Kubrick, ever the perfectionist, would insist on endless retakes, edited his films up to the very last moment before release, and sometimes even placed phone calls to projectionists if he heard that one of his films had been screened slightly out of focus. While Kubrick's perfectionist streak clearly annoyed his fellow professionals, it regularly resulted in films of high quality.

Kubrick's next film, Dr. Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (which I will hereafter refer to simply as Dr. Strangelove), would be one of those watershed films that would be forever marked on the timeline of cinematic history. Made for Shepperton Studios, it was revolutionary in combining grim cynicism with black comedy and satire of the most relentless kind. The film was scheduled for release on November 22nd, 1963, the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Kubrick quite sensibly delayed the release until the next year. That gave him time to remove references to "Dallas" and a line that would have been cruelly inappropriate: "Look the young American president has been cut down in his prime."

Kubrick would go on to make 2001: A space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). His works have ranged from exasperating to brilliant.

The Story: As the film begins, viewers are advised that for years, rumors have circulated among Western diplomats about a "doomsday machine" being built by the Russians under the perpetual cloud cover over a group of remote Russian arctic islands. Next, as the credits run, we watch a B-52 Stratofortress being refueled from an aerial tanker in midair. In the background, a familiar love song (Try a Little Tenderness) provides an ironic counterpoint to the destructive potential of these units of the Strategic Air Command. Each of these bombers, we are told, carries an explosive payload of 50 megatons, which is sixteen times the destructive power of all the bombs used by all of the armies in World War II.

The remainder of the story then proceeds mainly at three locations: Burpleson Air Force Base (AFB), on-board the air force B-52 bomber known as "Leper Colony", and in the Pentagon's underground War Room. The film deftly cuts back and forth between the three locales. At Burpleson AFB, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) receives a phone call from the base commander, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), advising him that he is ordering Condition Red, by which the base will be sealed tight (to guard against infiltrators). All radios are to be impounded to ensure that instructions cannot be issued to saboteurs. Furthermore, Mandrake is to signal the bombers that operate from Burpleson that they are to proceed with Wing Attack Plan R. Mandrake initially assumes that they are engaged in a training exercise, but Ripper ensures him that this is the real thing. "We are in a shooting war," he says. Mandrake dutifully carries out his orders, but, in the process of impounding radios, he notices that various stations are still broadcasting ordinary civilian music. Mandrake rushes immediately to Ripper's office but discovers that the Commander is not to be dissuaded. The explanation offered by the paranoid and mentally deranged Ripper invokes the indecisiveness of politicians and a Communist plot to destroy the purity and essence of our natural fluids through fluoridation. Ripper then locks his office door to prevent Mandrake from leaving.

Meanwhile, aboard the B-52 bomber "Leper Colony", circling at its failsafe point, the crew receives the specially coded message. The radioman, Lt. Goldberg (Paul Tamarin), decodes the message and relays it to the Maj. T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens), interrupting the Major's perusal of a Playboy Centerfold. Kong advises Goldberg that he will not tolerate horsing around on board the aircraft, but Goldberg solemnly insists that the transmission does indeed code for Wing Attack Plan R. Kong goes below to check for himself. After convincing himself that the message is valid, Kong dons his ten-gallon cowboy hat to the strains of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." In his thick Texas drawl, he delivers a stirring patriotic speech to his crew over the intercom, and the bomber joins thirty-three others in abandoning their failsafe points for a rendezvous with their respective targets inside Russia. As they proceed, Kong breaks out the top secret mission assignments and, later, the personal survival kits, reading off a list of the contents: "One forty-five caliber automatic, two boxes of ammunition, four days' concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, and tranquilizer pills, one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible, one-hundred dollars in rubles, one-hundred dollars in gold, nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactics, three lipsticks, and three pair of nylon stockings." Kong then opines, "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff!"

Meanwhile, in the Pentagon's cavernous War Room, the nation's top military and political leaders have gathered (except that the Vice President and Secretaries of Defense and State are all out of the country). Running the meeting is United States President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers again), who is something of a bald-headed Adlai Stevenson look-alike. Behind the circular table where the men have gathered is a massive display panel with a map of Russia and the current locations of the B-52 bombers. An obviously irritated Muffley asks Gen."Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott) (who has been inconveniently called away from cavorting with Miss Foreign Affairs (Tracy Reed)), to explain what is going on. "Mr. President," he begins, with little particular sense of urgency, "about 35 minutes ago, General Jack Ripper, the commanding general of Burpelson Air Force Base, issued an order to the 34 B-52's of his Wing, which were airborne at the time as part of a special exercise we were holding called Operation Drop-Kick. Now, it appears that the order called for the planes to attack their targets inside Russia. The planes are fully armed with nuclear weapons with an average load of 40 megatons each." Turgidson then draws the group's attention to the board behind them and they all note the lights indicating the position of the planes moving closer to Russia. "The aircraft will begin penetrating Russian radar cover within 25 minutes," he concludes. "I hate to judge before all the facts are in," he tells the incredulous President, "but it begins to look like General Ripper exceeded his authority." Later, Turgidson offers lamely, "Yes Sir, it appears that the human element has failed us here, but it's not fair to condemn the whole program because of one slip up."

Turgidson suggests that, under the circumstances, the best option for the U.S. is to launch an all-out sneak attack to degrade as much of the retaliatory capacity of the Ruskies as possible. "We've war-gamed that scenario, Sir, and figure it should result, depending on how it breaks, in no more than 10-20 million casualties – tops!" Cooler heads prevail, however. Muffley has invited Russian ambassador Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull) to join them in the War Room, much to the consternation of Turgidson. In fact, Turgidson and Sadesky get into a wrestling match when Turgidson spots the Russian taking pictures with a miniature camera. President Muffley has to break the fight up, saying, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!" A call is also initiated via the hotline to Premiere Kissoff in Russia. Kissoff is half drunk and in the midst of a tryst, so it's all Muffley can do to mollify him, with his most soothing tones, "Yes, I'm fine. You're fine? That's very nice. Isn't it great to be fine?" "Well, Dimitri," he finally begins, "One of our base commanders went a little bit funny in the head and did something silly." Soon, Sadesky reveals that the Russians have completed the construction of a doomsday machine, so if even one nuclear bomb goes off inside of Russia, the doomsday machine will release enough radioactivity, via a long-lasting Cobalt isotope, to destroy all human and animal life on earth.

Meanwhile, back at Burpleson AFB, Captain Mandrake, who is a British exchange officer, tries valiantly to wheedle the secret three-letter command code out of the loony General, as another Air Force unit is moving in to capture the errant base. Ripper, anticipating an inability to withstand torture, commits suicide in the bathroom. The resourceful Mandrake, however, manages to guess the code from the doodles left behind by the insane General. Now, Mandrake will need to contact the President at the Pentagon. Col. "Bat" Guano arrives, however, gun in hand, as commander of the invading force. Guano, a man of painfully limited insight, has settled it that Mandrake is some kind of commie prevert (sic). The military phones are all dead anyway. Mandrake persuades Guano to let him try calling the President on the payphone, but the operator won't accept the call unless Mandrake can come up with the exact change. The resourceful Mandrake demands that Guano shoot the lock off the nearby Coke machine. "Can you possibly imagine," he demands, "what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Shoot it off! Shoot! That's what the bullets are for, you twit!" Guano retorts, smugly, "You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company."

SPOILERS AHEAD! SKIP TO THEMES IF YOU'RE SO INCLINED.

The code finally gets through, thirty planes are called back, and three more are shot down by the Russians, leaving only the wounded "Leper Colony" flying in beneath the radar screen, leaking fuel as it goes. They have to settle for a "target of opportunity," rather than their original targets, which also means that the Russians won't find them. When the bomb doors jam, Major Kong, a true patriotic martyr, manually forces them open, and in one of the most memorable images in all of cinema, rides the missile home to its destination, like a rodeo star on a buckin' bronco. Back in the War Room, all that's left for the nation's leaders to discuss is how they might preserve enough samples of human DNA for the ultimate re-seeding of civilization. Dr. Strangelove (Sellers, in his third role), the ex-Nazi recruited to head the weapons development program (an obvious reference to Werner von Braun), has a plan. They can equip the nations various mineshafts with living quarters to provide for a small number of elite individuals. Naturally, the nations military and political leaders will need to be among those selected. In order to maximize repopulation, there will need to be a ratio of ten women for each man and the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics. The Russians, no doubt, will adopt the same strategy, so it will be critical not to allow a "mineshaft gap" that would enable the Russians to gain world domination when they all emerge – in about a hundred years!

Themes: What makes Dr. Strangelove a priceless film is how it combines achingly funny comedy and satire with the frightening and deadly serious prospect of nuclear annihilation. One of the film's deftest thrusts is at the complete absurdity of normal discourse in the face of possible destruction of the world, but reviewing a film about nuclear annihilation poses just that problem. What's the point of fiddlin' while Rome burns?

This film came out shortly after the Cuban missile crisis and Bay of Pigs fiasco. Kennedy and Khrushchev had behaved like two schoolboys having a showdown on a playground. Nuclear deterrence and mutual assured destruction were the buzzwords of the day. Those who could built bomb shelters. I am amazed by how many reviewers refer to all of that concern as "paranoia." Paranoia is unreasonable fear, but the risk of nuclear destruction, then as now, is palpable and far from implausible. Although the risk of an all-out superpower nuclear holocaust has receded a bit in recent decades, the risk of nuclear terrorism has never been higher. In fact, it's probably only a matter of time. Then, who knows what might follow from there. It only took a single bullet to precipitate World War I.

The most obvious target of the satire of Dr. Strangelove was the whole military mentality, captured by such terms as "balance of power," the "arms race," the "missile gap," and "nuclear deterrence." All of those terms depend on a delicate juggling act that cannot be sustained indefinitely. The world just can't tread on a precipice year after year without falling off. The film then equates all of this political posturing with the kind of male posturing that has gone on for thousands of years. It's the idea of male sexual power and virility that fuels these tough-guy displays and pissing contests. The right-wingers will say, "This is the way it's been throughout history and how it will always be." They may be right but, if so, they won't be right for long. Sometimes, history reaches points of discontinuity where the way it's always been cannot continue, without dire consequences. What would a nation do, for example, if it were faced with the prospect of humiliating defeat in war but still retained the capability of destroying the entire world? Might they not use it? America has, at present, the capacity to impose its will on countries like Iraq, to humiliate Iraqi men, and degrade their sense of virility, but how dearly is that going to cost us in the future? My personal view is that the only viable approach to foreign policy in the modern world is to hold fast and firm in all matters of morality and justice but also to eliminate all of the morally valid reasons why your enemy hates you – such as economic exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, torture, or mocking of the Koran.

It may be that civilizations always self-destruct (just as the auto-destruct mechanism in Dr. Strangelove destroyed itself) within a certain span of centuries or millennia. Since there is no science of the lifecycles of intelligent planetary life forms (it would require a larger sample than just the one we know about), we just can't know. Possibly it is the nature of life that technology always develops into the lethal range before intelligence develops to a level adequate to preserve itself by restraint. There's a phase in the development of living systems when aggressiveness is crucial to survival but there may be another phase in which those same aggressive tendencies are fatal. We look out into the cosmos for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and try to estimate how often the requisite set of physical circumstances exist. What we can't know is how long the requisite psychological circumstances exist to allow intelligent life to persist. How many civilizations around the universe have already arisen and self-destructed?

One of my old college buddies, John Ripper Jr., wrote me the following e-mail when he heard that I was going to be reviewing this old chestnut. It provides an alternative perspective:

What most people fail to understand is that this film was intended to awaken people to the most sinister Communist plot ever conceived, the fluoridation of our precious water supply. That the warning went unheeded is a sad commentary on the extent to which our American vigor has been sapped by the contamination of our precious bodily fluids. One need only observe the descent of American culture into the hedonistic excesses that destroyed the Roman Empire to realize how close the Commies came to world domination. Everywhere, is the pernicious influence of homosexuals, namby-pamby intellectuals, bleeding heart do-gooders, and other kinds of perverts. Dr. Strangelove ably reveals the inability of the effete prep-schooler politicians of Washington to engage in the kind of hard-nosed risk/benefit analysis that is required in times of crisis. Though the implausible doomsday machine scenario was introduced in the film to obscure the obvious, any leader worth his salt would have recognized that the only reasonable course of action, under the circumstances, was to obliterate the Russians and degrade their retaliatory capacity as swiftly and decisively as possible. Now, at last, we have in Washington a President who understands America's moral obligation to use its military superiority in preemptive and unilateral action to preserve both our way of life and the purity of our water supply. Since both the surface of the earth and the composition of our bodies is 70% water, fluoridation is ultimately an attack on the very essence of our biological substance.

Production Values: The script was adapted from Peter George's thriller Red Alert. Kubrick recruited the author to help adapt the novel to the screen, along with writer Terry Southern. Initially, the movie was to be a thriller, but Kubrick gradually came to see that it could be far more effective as a black comedy. When George agreed to the change in tone, the entire script was rewritten. Another factor in the decision was that the thriller Fail Safe was being made at about the same time and would be covering similar territory.

As comedy, Dr. Strangelove is incomparable in its deft combination of satire, irony, wit, physical humor, parody, caricature, and comedy of errors. There are also sight gags like the phrases "Dear John" and "Hi There!" stenciled onto the nuclear warheads. Never, in film, has rapier wit been more sharply honed. The names of the characters are all obvious puns. Gen. Ripper is named for the famous British serial killer, Mandrake for a plant that is said to stimulate fertility, Merkin and Muffley are both pubic references, Guano is bat excrement, Sadeski refers to the Marquis de Sade, and King Kong and Kissoff are patently obvious. Dr. Strangelove had changed his name from "Merkwurdichlieb," which is German for, roughly, sexual perversion.

The sets designed by Ken Adams are a big part of the film's success. Adams spent so much time researching the interior design of the B-52 bombers, without any cooperation from the security-conscious military, that he became concerned that the FBI might question him about his sources (which were all legal ones). The War Room was so realistic looking that the rather obtuse Ronald Reagan asked to see it as soon as he was sworn in. Most of the filming was done with Kubrick's usual tracking shots but, for the combat outside Burpleson AFB, Kubrick and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor used handheld cameras for up-close, realistic images. The editing is terrific, with not overly frequent cutting between the three sites. The pacing is excellent throughout.

There are so many brilliant performances in this film that it would be hard to know where to begin, except that Sellers provides triple the pleasure of the others. Playing three highly differentiated roles, the incomparable Sellers excels at all three, though Dr. Strangelove is inevitably the one that sticks in the memory most emphatically. Sellers was originally intended to play four parts, but he broke a leg after the first three had been filmed and Slim Pickens was hired for the role of Kong. As great at Sellers was, I can not now imagine Kong played by anyone other than Pickens. Sellers invented aspects of his characters as he went along. Kubrick went around the set wearing a black glove on one hand so that he could handle the sometimes overheated camera equipment. It was part of Kubrick's persona. One day, Sellers swiped Kubrick's glove and used it to create the black-gloved robotic hand, seemingly with a mind of its own and a propensity for saluting the Fuehrer. This addition was a little private joke at Kubrick's expense, but Kubrick accepted it graciously, especially because it added wonderfully to Strangelove's strangeness. The choking gesture, in particular, mocked Kubrick's self-stifling perfectionist tendencies. Sellers's other work included The Ladykillers (1955), I'm All Right Jack (1959), Lolita (1962), The Pink Panther (1964), What's New Pussycat? (1965), Casino Royale (1967), The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Murder by Death (1976), and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976).

George C. Scott displays an amazing comedic touch as Buck Turgidson. "Touch" is perhaps not the right choice of words, however. It's more like a sledgehammer blow of facial contortions and perfectly paced delivery of lines, with an "um" inserted strategically, here and there. Scott's long career included appearances in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Hustler (1961), Petulia (1968), and, of course, Patton (1970).

Sterling Hayden gives a terrifyingly believable performance as the paranoid Gen. Ripper, with the ever-present phallic cigar protruding from his mouth. Hayden had already worked in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Johnny Guitar (1954), and The Killing (1956) and went on to parts in The Godfather (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), 1900 (1976), and 9 to 5 (1980).

James Earl Jones had his first movie role in the relatively minor part of Lt. Lothar Zogg, the bombardier. Jones, who is as famous for his voice as his acting, played in all three of the films of the original Star Wars trilogy and in such other films as Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Patriot Games (1992), Sommersby (1993), The Lion King (1994), and Clear and Present Danger (1994). Slim Pickens, with that priceless southern drawl, had already appeared in One-Eyed Jacks (1961) and later was in Blazing Saddles (1974).

Peter Bull, who played the Russian Ambassador, once described how the film was supposed to end with a massive pie fight in the War Room. You can actually see the pies set up on a buffet table in one of the segments of the final version, but Kubrick ultimately decided that the pie fight didn't fit the mood of the rest of the film, and axed it. The scene was shot, however, and took some two weeks. The War Room was a masterpiece of a set and the ebony floors had been polished to such a fine state of gloss that the actors were required to wear cloth slippers during rehearsals so as not to scratch the sheen. It was an immaculate set altogether – until the pie fight. Each day for two weeks, 2000 fake lemon meringue pies (composed mostly of shaving cream) were ordered and the War Room cast went at it. At first, they weren't very accurate at heaving the pies at one another, but, as with any skill, they got better with practice. After the scene was finally completed to Kubrick's satisfaction, it was discovered that an additional take was necessary for one of the earlier scenes in the War Room. All of the costumes were totally saturated with pie ingredients and the room was a pigsty. Nevertheless, everything had to be cleaned up. The wardrobe lady took the entire mass of filthy costumes to a dry cleaning establishment and asked the woman if she could have them all cleaned for the next day. The lady turned white and began looking around for "Candid Camera." Peter Bull's other work included appearances in Marie Antoinette (1938), The African Queen (1951), and Doctor Doolittle (1967).

Bottom-Line: If I were responsible for choosing items to be placed in a safe container to be found by some intelligent life form millions of years hence to illustrate what kind of people we were before destroying ourselves through our own stupidity, I would include this film. Dr. Strangelove causes us to laugh – to laugh loudly – at our own foolishness and capacity for self-destruction. Some might call that a sick joke. Personally, I'm ashamed of the capacity of my species for thoughtless violence, exploitation, war, torture, sadism, and general inhumanity to our fellow beings. What I'm most proud of, however, is our capacity to laugh.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older