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Post by robertaxel on Oct 8, 2014 12:21:26 GMT -5
Provocative article which argues against the usual opinion that Dr. Strangelove completely overshadowed Fail Safe... link |
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Post by erik on Oct 8, 2014 14:59:29 GMT -5
Having seen both films many times, I will say that both FAIL SAFE and DOCTOR STRANGELOVE treat the general issue of nuclear war with quite a fair amount of seriousness and realism. I don't think FAIL SAFE is a bad film in any way, even when compared to STRANGELOVE.
The big difference between the two is that STRANGELOVE basically satirizes and skewers the generalized political paranoia that existed on either side of the Iron Curtain, mostly our side of the Iron Curtain, during the height of the Cold War (1954-1969). FAIL SAFE, for obvious reasons, avoids that, but that's not in any way a smear against a great film that has Henry Fonda giving one of his best performances as the president.
Both films basically do the same thing, in my opinion, and are each hugely successful at doing it. They just each go about doing it in radically different ways.
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Post by robertaxel on Oct 8, 2014 19:20:02 GMT -5
I agree Erik, they both show the insanity of thermonuclear war, in different ways..also an underrated performance by a young Larry Hagman under more pressure than any human being should be...
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Post by erik on Oct 9, 2014 8:52:32 GMT -5
Quote by robertaxel:
And I think one has to consider what Kubrick himself was doing when he made his film. He had intended to make a serious film about nuclear war for years, having acquired the rights to the Peter George novel Red Alert; but in doing the kind of exhaustive research that he was known for on nearly every film he ever did, he found himself discarding a lot of things about the subject that, to him, seemed so utterly crazy that an audience would laugh. In the end, he decided that the craziest things seemed to be the most realistic to him, hence the decision to make DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, with the help of legendary co-scenarist Terry Southern, a political black comedy, with the essential nuclear war track being played for maximum tension to go along with the hilarity, which often walks a thin and fine line with horror.
FAIL SAFE is more of a sober and intellectual drama, maybe more conventional than STRANGELOVE; but this is hardly a knock against it, thanks to Fonda and Hagman, as well as Walter Matthau and Fritz Weaver, and solid direction from Sidney Lumet. It really comes down to the fact that both films are classics of their time because they reflect the utter fear that the world at large had over the very real possibility (one that, I may add, still exists even now) of a thermonuclear Armageddon.
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