Quote by Gen. Jack D. Ripper

Forty-three years may have passed since it was first released, and the political climate that gave birth to it may no longer exist, but director Stanley Kubrick's 1964 masterpiece DR. STRANGELOVE still remains a timely and relevant film because not everything that it shows has been completely eliminated from the world scene--far from it. It is also a groundbreaking film from the standpoint of dealing with so serious a subject as the Cold War and the interrelated topic of thermonuclear annihilation in a most unconventional way--Black Comedy.

Kubrick had found in a 1958 book by British writer Peter George called Red Alert what he believed to be the basis for a firm reality-based thriller about the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust, which had greatly concerned him during the 1950s and early 1960s. But the more research he did on nuclear war, the more he realized just how bizarre the whole thing was, and he feared that he couldn't do it the way he had originally envisioned because he felt an audience would find it laughable. It was at that point, with the connivance of writer Terry Southern, that Kubrick decided that the best way to frame the thermonuclear dilemma would be in the form of a political black comedy.

Sterling Hayden portrays the crazed General Ripper, who orders an unauthorized nuclear strike on the Soviet Union because of his paranoia about the flouridation of water being an insidious Commie plot to sap us of "our precious bodily fluids" (and actually, right-wing pundits back then did consider fluoridation of water precisely that). Once word gets out about this, there is panic in the Pentagon's War Room, as we see the 34 B-52s of Hayden's wing making their way into Soviet airspace towards their bombing targets. Peter Sellers, in what can only be called sheer acting genius, plays three roles in the film: President Merkin Muffley (who is modelled off of Adlai Stevenson), who must somehow convince his boozed-up Soviet counterpart of the gravity of the situation; RAF officer Lionel Mandrake, who is convinced that Hayden has totally flipped his lid; and the Nazi nuclear scientist Dr. Strangelove. In the meantime, as Mandrake tries to find the recall code that will send Hayden's wing back, Sellers' President must also deal with a gung-ho general, Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) who insists on going all-out with the attack so that a greatly reduced Soviet retaliatory strike against the U.S. would result in "no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops...er, depending on the breaks." The stakes are upped further when the Soviet ambassador (Peter Bull) informs the President that if even one nuke is dropped on Russia, it will set off a cataclysmic Doomsday device...and that'll be all she wrote for the human race!

Because of its approach to its subject matter, and the fact that its release date of late January 1964 came just two months after JFK's assassination in Dallas, DR. STRANGELOVE was an extremely controversial film. Nothing was more frightening during that time period that the prospect of nuclear Armageddon launched by one or both superpowers, and yet Kubrick was tackling this kind of subject matter in a caustically satirical fashion. In truth, the film deals with nuclear war in a fairly straight-forward fashion. What Kubrick is satirizing are the political, military, and bureaucratic machinations that made the prospect of Armageddon such a frightening subject in the first place.

In essence, this was the first Hollywood film (though Kubrick actually made it in England) to challenge the military/industrial complex that had dominated American life since World War II, and to skewer them for the insane build-up of weaponry that, with one push of a button, could end the human race. Indeed, much of the dialogue and characterizations in the film are based on people and beliefs of that time inside the American government. The character of Strangelove is modelled off of nuclear think-tank master Herman Kahn (whose book On Thermonuclear War Kubrick had read extensively). The cigar-chomping character of Ripper and Turgidson's "rosy" post-nuke death estimates are both modelled off of General Curtis LeMay, the former head of the Strategic Air Command and Air Force Chief of Staff during that time period whose anti-Commie views bordered on the psychotic. And the climactic moment of the film, in which the bombadier pilot played by Slim Pickens rides his bomb down like he is riding a bronc at a rodeo, has come to be seen as a metaphor for American "cowboy" behavior in the world political arena.

There are a number of reasons that DR. STRANGELOVE remains relevant. One is how it shows that the people most equipped to stop a war are also the ones most willing to start one; that aspect has not changed. Another is the fact that there are still enough nuclear weapons to go around, especially in the paranoia of post-9/11 America. A third one, evidenced by this film's mythical Doomsday machine, is one that hits even closer to home for us--our extreme dependence on technology, which is not exactly infallible. This particular tract of STRANGELOVE would be mined by many films in the future, including JURASSIC PARK, THE CHINA SYNDROME, and Kubrick's very next film, the 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

DR. STRANGELOVE remains perhaps the most politically incorrect movie ever made--a film willing to challenge the rationale of government and people in high places. But its politically incorrect viewpoint still stings, because the only thing that has changed is the nature of the enemy. The rest remains the same.

What a very interesting post Erik! I've seen Dr. Strangelove a couple of times over the years. I definitely think it was a movie that was made way before its time. Evidence that not really that much has changed from when the movie was released versus today's time period.

Excellent post and I very much enjoyed reading.

Another notable thing about DR. STRANGELOVE is that it has such an endless supply of memorable quotes. It's kind of a sad commentary that very few Hollywood films of late have even one or two quotes that anyone remembers after just a few years, and a film like this released in 1964 should have these gems:

"Gentleman, you can't fight in here; this is the War Room!"

"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff"

"You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company"

"Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!"

"Well listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri?"

"I'm beginnin' to smell a big, fat Commie rat!"

And this is really just a small sampling. Granted, it's hard for Hollywood screenwriters these days to come up with merely good, let alone memorable dialogue. But this was a film that touched on so many anxieties we had about the Cold War, the possibility of nuclear war, and the (perceived) threat of Communism that it almost reads like a good history book as much as it does the outrageous political satire that it is (IMHO).