Dr. Strangelove


Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a 1964 political satire black comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George, who wrote the screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern. The film, financed and released by Columbia Pictures, was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom.
Dr. Strangelove parodies Cold War fears of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union and stars Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. The story concerns an insane brigadier general of the United States Air Force who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It follows the President of the United States, his scientific advisor Dr. Strangelove, a Royal Air Force exchange officer, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as they attempt to stop the crew of a B-52 from bombing the Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.
The film is widely considered one of the best comedy films and one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 26th in its list of the best American films, 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". 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, and it also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Plot

Jack D. Ripper, the commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, orders his executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, to put the base on alert, confiscate all privately owned radios from base personnel and issue "Wing Attack Plan R" to the planes of the 843rd Bomb Wing. At the time of issuance of said order, the planes, flying B-52 bombers armed with thermonuclear bombs, are on airborne alert two hours from their targets inside the Soviet Union.
The aircraft commence attack flights on the USSR and set their radios to allow communications only through their CRM 114 discriminators, which are designed to accept only communications preceded by a secret three-letter code known only to General Ripper. Happening upon a radio that had been missed earlier and hearing regular civilian broadcasting, Mandrake realizes that no attack order has been issued by the Pentagon and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office. Ripper tells Mandrake that he believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans. Mandrake realizes Ripper has gone completely mad.
In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson briefs President Merkin Muffley and other officers about how "Plan R" enables a senior officer to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all of his superior officers have been killed in a first strike on the United States. Trying every CRM code combination to issue a recall order would require two days, so Muffley orders the U.S. Army to storm the base and arrest General Ripper. Turgidson, noting the slim odds of recalling the planes in time, then proposes that Muffley not only let the attack proceed but send reinforcements. Muffley rejects Turgidson's recommendation and instead brings Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski into the War Room to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov. Muffley warns the premier of the impending attack and offers to reveal the targets, flight plans, and defensive systems of the bombers so that the Soviets can protect themselves.
After a heated discussion with a drunken Kissov, the ambassador informs President Muffley that the Soviet Union created a doomsday machine as a nuclear deterrent; it consists of many buried cobalt bombs, which are set to detonate automatically should any nuclear attack strike the country. The resulting nuclear fallout would render the Earth's surface uninhabitable for 93 years. The device cannot be deactivated, as it is programmed to explode if any such attempt is made. The president's German scientific adviser, the paraplegic former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, points out that such a doomsday machine would only have been an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; de Sadeski replies that Kissov had planned to reveal its existence to the world the following week at the Party Congress.
When the U.S. Army troops gain control of Burpelson, General Ripper commits suicide. Mandrake infers the CRM code from doodles on Ripper's desk blotter and relays it to the Pentagon. Using the code, Strategic Air Command successfully recalls all of the bombers except for one, commanded by Major T. J. "King" Kong. Because its radio equipment was damaged by a Soviet SAM, it is unable to receive or send communications. To conserve fuel, Kong flies below radar and switches targets, thus preventing Soviet air radar from detecting and intercepting their plane. Because the Soviet missile also damaged the bomb bay doors, Kong enters the bay and repairs the electrical wiring. When he is successful, the bomb drops with him straddling it. Kong joyously hoots and waves his cowboy hat as he rides the falling bomb to his death.
In the War Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundred thousand people to live in deep underground mines where the radiation will not penetrate. Worried that the Soviets will do the same, Turgidson warns about a "mineshaft gap" while de Sadeski secretly photographs the War Room. Dr. Strangelove prepares to announce his plan for that when he suddenly stands up out of his wheelchair and exclaims, "Mein Führer, I can walk!" The movie ends with a montage of explosions set to "We'll Meet Again" signifying the activation of the doomsday device.

Cast

agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played at least four major roles. The condition stemmed from the studio's opinion that much of the success of Kubrick's previous film Lolita was based on Sellers's performance, in which his single character assumes several identities. Sellers also played three roles in The Mouse That Roared. Kubrick accepted the demand, later saying that "such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business."
Sellers had been expected to play Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 aircraft commander, but was reluctant; he felt his workload was too heavy and worried he would not properly portray the character's Texan accent. Kubrick pleaded with him, and he asked the screenwriter Terry Southern to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in his accent; Sellers then practiced using Southern's tapes. After the start of shooting in the aircraft, Sellers sprained his ankle and could no longer work in the cramped aircraft mockup.
Sellers improvised much of his dialogue, with Kubrick incorporating the ad-libs into the written screenplay, a practice known as retroscripting.

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake

According to film critic Alexander Walker, the author of biographies of both Sellers and Kubrick, the role of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake was the easiest of the three for Sellers to play, since he was aided by his experience of mimicking his superiors while serving in the RAF during World War II. There is also a heavy resemblance to Sellers's friend and occasional co-star Terry-Thomas and the prosthetic-limbed RAF flying ace Sir Douglas Bader.

President Merkin Muffley

For his performance as President Merkin Muffley, Sellers assumed a Midwestern American English accent. Sellers drew inspiration for the role from Adlai Stevenson, a former Illinois governor who was the Democratic candidate for the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections and the U.N. ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In early takes, Sellers simulated cold symptoms to emphasize the character's apparent weakness. That caused frequent laughter among the film crew, ruining several takes. Kubrick ultimately found this comic portrayal inappropriate, feeling Muffley should be a serious character. In later takes, Sellers played the role straight, though the President's cold is still evident in several scenes.

Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove is a scientist and former Nazi, suggesting Operation Paperclip, the US effort to recruit top German technical talent at the end of World War II. He serves as President Muffley's scientific adviser in the War Room. When General Turgidson wonders aloud to Mr. Staines, what kind of name "Strangelove" is, as it does not sound like a "Kraut name", Staines responds that Strangelove's original German surname was Merkwürdigliebe and that "he changed it when he became a citizen". Strangelove accidentally addresses the president as Mein Führer twice in the film. Dr. Strangelove did not appear in the book Red Alert.
The character is an amalgamation of the Hungarian mathematician John Von Neumann, RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and Edward Teller, the "father of the hydrogen bomb". Rumors claimed the character was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this; Sellers said: "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger—that's a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun." Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of Dr. Strangelove, he was a little-known academic.
The wheelchair-using Strangelove furthers a Kubrick trope of the menacing, seated antagonist, first depicted in Lolita through the character Dr. Zaempf. Strangelove's accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee, who worked for Kubrick as a special photographic effects consultant. Strangelove's appearance echoes the mad scientist archetype as seen in the character Rotwang in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis. Sellers's Strangelove takes from Rotwang the single black gloved hand, the wild hair, and, most importantly, his ability to avoid being controlled by political power. According to Alexander Walker, Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black leather gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture. Dr. Strangelove apparently has alien hand syndrome. Kubrick wore the gloves on the set to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers, recognizing the potential connection to Lang's work, found them to be menacing.