Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb !
A dark comedy from the creative mind of Stanley Kubrick this time and yes it’s produced with the typical Kubrick methods not only on the film but more of that later.
It’s strange to look back 60 odd years later at the state of the world but we must to give this film a context. Only two years before the world had held its breath as the Cuban missile crisis was in full swing. With the Soviet Union placing nuclear tipped missiles only 90 miles from the U.S mainland there was a real fear that the Cold War would turn hot. Lucky the U.S quarantine of Cuba worked and after negotiations the tensions were deescalated. As the film states there were B-52 bombers constantly in the air ready to retaliate a strike, it was called operation Chrome Dome and would last most of the decade, of course with a high intensity of missions there are mistakes and accidents and these frequently reported in the press. It was the hight of the space race with NASA’s Gemini program in its infancy and the Soviet Union claiming a number of victories in maned space flight firsts.
So with all this in mind Stanley Kubrick presents a Cold war satire or dark comedy. Peter Sellers is to star in three different roles and use his comedy genius to knit the film together. Kubrick was later to comment about Sellers high fee of a million dollars and 55% of the films budget. “I got three actors for the price of six” but I think without sellers and his madcap comedy there is no film so it was a bargain.
The pentagon were obviously approached to try and assist with this film and after ready the script declined to offer any help. With part of the film set inside a B-52 bomber set designer Ken Adam had to use a small photograph from a British aviation magazine as his reference point, by all accounts the U.S airforce were shocked at the accuracy in the detail of the top secret bomber on the big screen.
The film,
Well it’s impossible to share the subtle jokes and nuances of the satire in the film and as it’s also very complex with its references to people of the time or near the time you’ll have to look for them all yourself.
I can give you the basic premise. A U.S airforce base commander goes insane and orders his air wing to attack the USSR only he s the recall code for the air wing and he cuts the base off from the outside world and orders his guards to defend the base at all costs. An exchange officer who’s in the base is the only one who can see the insanity and tries in vain to change his mind with out success.
The U.S president brings his chiefs of staff to the war room to discuss it. The air force general in overall command pushes for a first strike and is hard line anti
Communist when the Soviet ambassador is called tension boils over ! Everything is restored to normal and the hot line is used to contact the Soviet Premier to warn him of the attack. On the base the guards are defending against the forces trying to recapture it and Mandrake is trying to deal with the ever growing insanity of the commander.
In the war room the president is briefed about the doomsday device built by the Soviets that will destroy everything if triggered and there is growing alarm. The airforce general counters and undermines everything he says. The ambassador explains why the doomsday machine was built and Sellers third character enters Dr Strangelove the crippled former German scientist with comic genius ensues. Fighting at the air base is intense and concentrated around a Strategic Air Command sign that reads “Peace is our profession”.
The B-52 we’re following is damaged by a Soviet missile but still able to fly, the radio that can show the recall code has been destroyed and as per plan R all other radios are turned off as the B-52 gets ready for the last phase of its flight. At the airbase Mandrake has worked ot the recall code and forces have taken back the airbase he’s forced to use a phone box and leaked a collect call to give it to the president. The code is sent and all but one of the bombers are recalled. The president finds out from the Soviet premier that there is one bomber left and if it’s not recalled it’s the end of the world.
The bomber rolls in on final approach and there’s a problem in the bomb bay so Maj Kong goes to fix it, it’s a wiring fault that requires him to straddle a bomb to fix and it takes him the whole bomb run to complete and he ends up riding the bomb to target and the end of the world.
The players
Stanley Kubrick brings his genius to the screen again, ok the model shots look dated but it doesn’t detract from the film. Kubrick wasn’t sure what to use as the background for the opening credits and asked for some library footage of B-52’s being refuelled in flight the footage looked so pseudo-erotic that it was chosen. Kubrick who was well versed in chess would play against George C Scott between takes, Scott would for the most part come out second best and Kubrick would use this to get the performance he wanted from the actor. It’s also claimed that the scene where Scott goes over the top with the “Chicken in a basket skit” was asked for by Kubrick and he insisted that the cameras where not rolling, Scott was worried that his over the top performance would ridicule him as an actor. Kubrick asked his production team if the trajectory's on the screen were correct, they answered that they were false and he asked them to look up the real trajectory’s from contacts in the defence department. Once it was all collated he asked them where the safest place to live was they answered Cork in west Ireland which started a property boom.
George C Scott found the overacting to be annoying and vowed never to work with Kubrick again although this softened over time and he came to regard this as one of his favourite rolls. When he falls over in the war room and continues with his speech this was a genuine accident but Kubrick left it in. His character was modelled after the chief of the airforce Curtis LeMay who was renown for his anti communist views and is quoted as claiming he wouldn’t be afraid to start a nuclear war.
Peter Sellers, the only reason the studio agreed to finance this film was the condition that Peter Sellers play multiple roles as he had in Lolita. With that in mind Sellers was cast in four rolls Group Captain Mandrake the exchange officer on the air base, Maj (king) Kong the pilot of the B-52 bomber ( Sellers couldn’t get the Texas accent right and was replaced with Slim Pickens) president Merkin Muffley who was based of the U.S ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson II and of course DR Starngelove the Ex German scientist who only has control over one arm. Sellers told Kubrick not to expect the same performance twice with this character as it was mostly improvised so Kubrick used Six cameras to record the scenes insuring nothing was missed, of all Sellers characters Dr Strangelove had the least amount of screen time.
An early roll for James Earl Jones who asked why Slim Pickens stayed in character for so long, he was of course told that he wasn’t acting and that was just how he was !
Jane fun stay safe ๐๐ผ
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