Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 political satire black comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film, financed and released by Columbia Pictures, was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
- Stanley Kubrick
- Terry Southern
- Peter George
Red Alert
by Peter George
Stanley Kubrick
- January 29, 1964
94 minutes[1]
English
$1.8 million[6]
$9.2 million (2022)[6]
The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, also stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed, and is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern.
The story concerns an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It separately follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange officer as they attempt to prevent the crew of a B-52 (following orders from the general) from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.
The film is often considered one of the best comedies ever made and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it twenty-sixth in its list of the best American movies (in the 2007 edition, the film ranked thirty-ninth), and in 2000, it was listed as number three on its list of the funniest American films. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[7][8] The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White), and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
Production[edit]
Novel and screenplay[edit]
Stanley Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident that built on the widespread Cold War fear for survival.[35] While doing research, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and paradoxical "balance of terror" between nuclear powers. At Kubrick's request, Alastair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies) recommended the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George.[36] Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and reprinted in The Observer,[37] and immediately bought the film rights.[38] In 2006, Schelling wrote that conversations between Kubrick, Schelling, and George in late 1960 about a treatment of Red Alert updated with intercontinental missiles eventually led to the making of the film.[39]
In collaboration with George, Kubrick started writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and later, Herman Kahn.[40] In following the tone of the book, Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. However, he began to see comedy inherent in the idea of mutual assured destruction as he wrote the first draft. He later said:
Themes[edit]
Satirizing the Cold War[edit]
Dr. Strangelove ridicules nuclear war planning.[61] It mocks numerous contemporary Cold War attitudes such as the "missile gap" but it primarily directs its satire on the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to be deterred from a nuclear war by the prospect of a universal cataclysm regardless of who "won".[62] Military strategist and former physicist Herman Kahn, in the book On Thermonuclear War (1960), used the theoretical example of a "doomsday machine" to illustrate the limitations of MAD, which was developed by John von Neumann.
The concept of such a machine is consistent with MAD doctrine when it is logically pursued to its conclusion. It thus worried Kahn that the military might like the idea of a doomsday machine and build one.[63] Kahn, a leading critic of MAD and the Eisenhower administration's doctrine of massive retaliation upon the slightest provocation by the USSR, considered MAD to be foolish bravado, and urged the United States to instead plan for proportionality, and thus even a limited nuclear war. With this reasoning, Kahn became one of the architects of the flexible response doctrine which, while superficially resembling MAD, allowed for the possibility of responding to a limited nuclear strike with a proportional, or calibrated, return of fire (see Conflict escalation).
Kahn educated Kubrick on the concept of the semi-realistic "cobalt-thorium G" doomsday machine, and then Kubrick used the concept for the film. Kahn in his writings and talks would often come across as cold and calculating, for example, with his use of the term "megadeaths" and in his willingness to estimate how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically.[64] Kahn's dispassionate attitude towards millions of deaths is reflected in Turgidson's remark to the president about the outcome of a preemptive nuclear war: "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks." Turgidson has a binder that is labelled "World Targets in Megadeaths," a term coined in 1953 by Kahn and popularized in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War.[65]
The fallout-shelter-network proposal mentioned in the film, with its inherently high radiation protection characteristics, has similarities and contrasts to that of the real Swiss civil defense network. Switzerland has an overcapacity of nuclear fallout shelters for the country's population size, and by law, new homes must still be built with a fallout shelter.[66][67] If the US did that, it would violate the spirit of MAD and, according to MAD adherents, allegedly destabilize the situation because the US could launch a first strike and its population would largely survive a retaliatory second strike (see MAD § Theory).
To rebut early 1960s novels and Hollywood films like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, which raised questions about US control over nuclear weapons, the Air Force produced a documentary film, SAC Command Post, to demonstrate its responsiveness to presidential command and its tight control over nuclear weapons.[68] However, later academic research into declassified documents showed that U.S. military commanders had been given presidentially-authorized pre-delegation for the use of nuclear weapons during the early Cold War, showing that this aspect of the film's plot was plausible.[69]
The characters of Buck Turgidson and Jack Ripper both satirize the real-life Gen. Curtis LeMay of the Strategic Air Command.[70]
Sexual themes[edit]
In the months following the film's release, director Stanley Kubrick received a fan letter from Legrace G. Benson of the Department of History of Art at Cornell University interpreting the film as being sexually-layered. The director wrote back to Benson and confirmed the interpretation, "Seriously, you are the first one who seems to have noticed the sexual framework from intromission (the planes going in) to the last spasm (Kong's ride down and detonation at target)."[71]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
Dr. Strangelove is Kubrick's highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes,[73] holding a 98% approval rating based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's summary states that "Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Cold War satire remains as funny and razor-sharp today as it was in 1964."[74] The film also holds a score of 97 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". The film is ranked number 7 in the All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section.[75] It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Dr. Strangelove is on Roger Ebert's list of The Great Movies, and he described it as "arguably the best political satire of the century".[76] One of the most celebrated of all film comedies,[77] in 1998, Time Out conducted a reader's poll and Dr. Strangelove was voted the 47th greatest film of all time.[78] Entertainment Weekly voted it at No. 14 on their list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.[79] in 2002, it was ranked as the 5th best film in Sight & Sound poll of best films.[80] John Patterson of The Guardian wrote, "There had been nothing in comedy like Dr Strangelove ever before. All the gods before whom the America of the stolid, paranoid 50s had genuflected—the Bomb, the Pentagon, the National Security State, the President himself, Texan masculinity and the alleged Commie menace of water-fluoridation—went into the wood-chipper and never got the same respect ever again."[81] It is also listed as number 26 on Empire's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, and in 2010 it was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best films since the publication's inception in 1923.[82] The Writers Guild of America ranked its screenplay the 12th best ever written.[83]
In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedic film of all time. The film ranked 42nd in BBCs 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.[84] The film was selected as the 2nd best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017.[85]
Studio response[edit]
Columbia Pictures' early reaction to Dr. Strangelove was anything but enthusiastic. In "Notes From The War Room", in the summer 1994 issue of Grand Street magazine, co-screenwriter Terry Southern recalled that, as production neared the end, "It was about this time that word began to reach us, reflecting concern as to the nature of the film in production. Was it anti-American? Or just anti-military? And the jackpot question: Was it, in fact, anti-American to whatever extent it was anti-military?"[86]
Southern recalled how Kubrick grew concerned about seeming apathy and distancing by studio heads Abe Schneider and Mo Rothman, and by Columbia's characterization of the film as "just a zany, novelty flick which did not reflect the views of the corporation in any way."[86] Southern noted that Rothman was in "prominent attendance" at a ceremony in 1989 when the Library of Congress announced it as one of the first 25 films on the National Film Registry.[86]
Canceled sequel[edit]
In 1995, Kubrick enlisted Terry Southern to script a sequel titled Son of Strangelove. Kubrick had Terry Gilliam in mind to direct. The script was never completed, but index cards laying out the story's basic structure were found among Southern's papers after he died in October 1995. It was set largely in underground bunkers, where Dr. Strangelove had taken refuge with a group of women.[93]
In 2013, Gilliam commented, "I was told after Kubrick died—by someone who had been dealing with him—that he had been interested in trying to do another Strangelove with me directing. I never knew about that until after he died but I would have loved to."[94]
Papers
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