“Do you recall what Clemenceau said about war? He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. 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.”
Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, was recently voted by Crave’s venerable film writers to be the single best political movie of all time. The film now enjoys the full Criterion treatment this week, which is good a reason as any to revisit it. Here’s what I discovered on my most recent visit: The film is hilarious.
Columbia Pictures
What most audiences take away from Dr. Strangelove is its satire. Here in 2016, we can still feel the horrid sting of phrases like “mutually assured destruction,” which was actually used by American politicians as a matter of policy. If America attacked Russia, or vice versa, the other side would retaliate with equally deadly force, which would more or less assure the end of both countries, and probably many others as well. This was called The Balance of Power.
Dr. Strangelove pointed out how absurd all of this was; if both sides are destroyed, then no one is powerful anymore, right? This wasn’t exactly whipping a blanket off things and exposing hypocrisy to light – anyone with two neurons to run together can see that doomsday is not the same as war – but this film was the first to speak up as loudly as it did. This policy was absurd. It still is. Dr. Strangelove playfully and incredulously used satire, humor, and a logical extreme (that doesn’t seem so extreme anymore) to argue how ridiculous it is.
Columbia Pictures
Dr. Strangelove imagines a scenario wherein a single general named Ripper (stone ghoul Sterling Hayden), using a bit of wherewithal and no small amount of mental illness, decides that the Communists need to be take care of, and uses a loophole in nuclear policy to issue a widespread strike on Russia. Generals, politicians, and the mealy-mouthed president (Peter Sellers) are helpless to stop the strike, distracted by double-speak, policy, and pride. It’s eventually revealed by the Russian ambassador (Peter Bull) that a strike on Russia would automatically activate a doomsday device that would end civilization. This was meant to be a deterrent. Will the world be saved at the last minute? Or will it end with a montage of exploding bombs, while Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” plays over the credits?
The satire still plays. But about that humor. Dr. Strangelove skirts right on the edge of slapstick farce. The only thing saving it is how serious all the characters are, and how unaware they are of their own absurdity. General Turgidson (a brilliant George C. Scott) rests somewhere in between a serious army general and a Hanna-Barbera character. There is a famous scene wherein Scott accidentally stumbled backward, fell over, rolled back onto his feet, and continued the scene. This scene was an accident, but Kubrick – in an uncharacteristic move – left it in the final cut of the film. It’s a strangely natural moment from that blustering character, and one to give titters.
Slim Pickens, who plays the pilot of a secret B-52 bomber, plays his part straight (Kubrick reportedly didn’t tell Pickens that Dr. Strangelove was meant to be a comedy), but he’s such a well-rounded character actor, his character seems almost broad. The scenes aboard the B-52 bomber are the most tense in the film, as this will be the place where the ultimate decision is made to take the life of the planet. The politicians are helpless.
Columbia Pictures
And then there’s Peter Sellers, who plays a steely British officer who has to argue logic with the mad Ripper, and also plays the ineffectual president, and also the mysterious title character. Dr. Strangelove is the one outwardly absurdist characters in the drama. He is an ex-Nazi of some stripe, whose implacable accent and disembodied hand turn him into a comic book supervillain, only with a playful amorality and no actual resolve, rather than villainy.
Dr. Strangelove may have worked as a serious thriller, but Kubrick knew better. He knew that desperate squeaky helplessness would more strongly reflect on the politics of the day if it were played for laughs. And every single character in the film is, in a very classical sense, a buffoon. This is a film that explores the most serious of topics – the end of the world at our own hands – using the type stock characters one normally encounters in commedia del’arte.
While Dr. Strangelove may have been commenting on something that was very immediate in 1964, it feels grossly universal, and eternally relevant. And, thanks to its cast and its smarts, it will always be hilarious.
Top Image: Columbia Pictures
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
