Post by erik on Dec 13, 2013 22:16:31 GMT -5
Quote by General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in DOCTOR STRANGELOVE:
At the end of January in 2014, one of the greatest politically-themed films of all times will be celebrating its 50th anniversary. That film is director Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 political black comedy DOCTOR STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.
Kubrick in the early 1960s had both a fascination and a fear with Cold War politics and the threat of thermonuclear war, as did most of the rest of humanity; and being in the business he was in, he made it a point to try and make a film on that subject. He came across a slender but highly concentrated book on the subject by Peter George, Red Alert, and had every intention of making a serious film. But in doing the exhaustive research he was known for, he found himself discarding certain elements because they seemed so outlandish that an audience might laugh at them. Finally, he decided that the best way to do this was as a political satire. The end result was something even more formidable than he himself realized.
By now, we all know that it is about a deranged general (Hayden) ordering his bombers to attack the Soviet Union on the pre-text of fluoridation of America's water supply being an insidious Commie plot (something, by the way, the was actually believed by hard-right wing groups in the 1950s). What ensues in this 95-minute masterpiece is stinging and savage satire of the highest order, as the American president (Peter Sellers, in one of three splendid roles), General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott, doing an only slight OTT impersonation of Curtis LeMay), and others try to recall Hayden's bomb wing before they trigger off the Soviets' dreaded Doomsday device, and, hence, nuclear Armageddon. But all the while, it should be mentioned that it isn't really the possibility of nuclear war that is being sent up; that part of the film is played fairly straight. What is really being sent up is the paranoia that America had about Russia, and the ludicrous belief that a first strike on the Soviet Union could result in America suffering, in the words of Scott's numbers-crazy general, "no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops...er, depending on the breaks."
It is interesting to note how many similarities to real-life Cold War players there are in the characters in the film. Sellers' president is modeled off of a combination of Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. His Dr. Strangelove is a deranged conflation of Herman Kahn (whose book On Thermonuclear War informs much of the film), Edward Teller, and Werner von Braun. Hayden's character, meanwhile, combines both LeMay and his real-life successor at the Strategic Air Command, General Tommy Power, both die-hard (even borderline psychopathic) anti-Commies. Given all this, the fact that its initial preview screening of November 22, 1963 was cancelled (for rather obvious reasons), and the way it approached the subject, it wasn't too surprising that DOCTOR STRANGELOVE should have been such a monumentally controversial movie when it finally was released in late January 1964. Nor was it too surprising that the public's increasing mistrust of those in charge of the American government, both at the civilian and military levels, should have been reflected in the film's massive success at the box office.
Few films have ever managed to be as chilling and funny at the same time as DOCTOR STRANGELOVE is, and continues to be, because, while the Cold War may have ended in 1990, neither the weapons of that era nor the will of certain of our military leaders have done likewise. Its lasting legacy is not merely that war is evil, but that it is utterly f***ing insane.
"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."
At the end of January in 2014, one of the greatest politically-themed films of all times will be celebrating its 50th anniversary. That film is director Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 political black comedy DOCTOR STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.
Kubrick in the early 1960s had both a fascination and a fear with Cold War politics and the threat of thermonuclear war, as did most of the rest of humanity; and being in the business he was in, he made it a point to try and make a film on that subject. He came across a slender but highly concentrated book on the subject by Peter George, Red Alert, and had every intention of making a serious film. But in doing the exhaustive research he was known for, he found himself discarding certain elements because they seemed so outlandish that an audience might laugh at them. Finally, he decided that the best way to do this was as a political satire. The end result was something even more formidable than he himself realized.
By now, we all know that it is about a deranged general (Hayden) ordering his bombers to attack the Soviet Union on the pre-text of fluoridation of America's water supply being an insidious Commie plot (something, by the way, the was actually believed by hard-right wing groups in the 1950s). What ensues in this 95-minute masterpiece is stinging and savage satire of the highest order, as the American president (Peter Sellers, in one of three splendid roles), General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott, doing an only slight OTT impersonation of Curtis LeMay), and others try to recall Hayden's bomb wing before they trigger off the Soviets' dreaded Doomsday device, and, hence, nuclear Armageddon. But all the while, it should be mentioned that it isn't really the possibility of nuclear war that is being sent up; that part of the film is played fairly straight. What is really being sent up is the paranoia that America had about Russia, and the ludicrous belief that a first strike on the Soviet Union could result in America suffering, in the words of Scott's numbers-crazy general, "no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops...er, depending on the breaks."
It is interesting to note how many similarities to real-life Cold War players there are in the characters in the film. Sellers' president is modeled off of a combination of Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. His Dr. Strangelove is a deranged conflation of Herman Kahn (whose book On Thermonuclear War informs much of the film), Edward Teller, and Werner von Braun. Hayden's character, meanwhile, combines both LeMay and his real-life successor at the Strategic Air Command, General Tommy Power, both die-hard (even borderline psychopathic) anti-Commies. Given all this, the fact that its initial preview screening of November 22, 1963 was cancelled (for rather obvious reasons), and the way it approached the subject, it wasn't too surprising that DOCTOR STRANGELOVE should have been such a monumentally controversial movie when it finally was released in late January 1964. Nor was it too surprising that the public's increasing mistrust of those in charge of the American government, both at the civilian and military levels, should have been reflected in the film's massive success at the box office.
Few films have ever managed to be as chilling and funny at the same time as DOCTOR STRANGELOVE is, and continues to be, because, while the Cold War may have ended in 1990, neither the weapons of that era nor the will of certain of our military leaders have done likewise. Its lasting legacy is not merely that war is evil, but that it is utterly f***ing insane.