Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opens in theaters to both critical and popular acclaim. The movie’s popularity was evidence of changing attitudes toward atomic weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrence.
The movie focused on the actions of a rogue U.S. officer who believes that communists are threatening the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans. Without authorization, he issues orders to U.S. bombers to launch atomic attacks against the Soviet Union. When it becomes evident that some of the bombers may actually drop their atomic payloads, American President Merkin Muffley frantically calls his Soviet counterpart. The Russian leader informs Muffley that an atomic attack on the Soviet Union will automatically unleash the terrible “doomsday machine,” which will snuff out all life on the planet. Muffley’s chief foreign policy advisor, Dr. Strangelove, reassures the president and chief officials that all is not lost: they can, he posits, survive even the doomsday machine by retreating to deep mineshafts.
Close scrutiny of the Dr. Strangelove character indicated that he was probably a composite of three people: Henry Kissinger, a political scientist who had written about nuclear deterrence strategy; Edward Teller, a key scientist in the development of the hydrogen bomb; and Wernher von Braun, the German scientist who was a leading figure in missile technology.
Little scrutiny was needed, however, to grasp Kubrick’s satirical attacks on the American and Russian policies of nuclear stockpiling and massive retaliation. The film’s jabs at some of the sacred core beliefs of America’s defense strategy struck a chord with the American people. Particularly after the frightening Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—when nuclear annihilation seemed a very real possibility—the American public was increasingly willing to question the nation’s reliance on nuclear weapons.
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Lots of memorable scenes in that one. Great cast too. The bomb ride at the end is iconic.
Kubrick was a genius with political satire, something that hasn’t been done very much lately aside from Wag the Dog.
My favorite parts were the B-52 scenes with Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones, and all the Peter Seller’s characters; classic film and darkly funny.
“My Fuhrer, I can walk!”
Sheer genius from Kubrick, the great cast, but Peter Sellers is transcendental.
“They’re trying to steal our precious bodily fluids”.
What was Kubric trying to tell us?
They were also putting fluoride in our drinking water …
From the movie …
“General Jack D. Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Well, no, I can’t say I have.
General Jack D. Ripper: Vodka. That’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Well, I believe that’s what they drink, Jack. Yes.
General Jack D. Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water and not without good reason.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Yes. I – I doubt quite see what you’re getting at, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Water. That’s what I’m getting at. Water.”
… and …
“General Jack D. Ripper: Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.”
Rots the brain it does.
That’s what I’ve been on about.
They literally tell you everything they are doing or will do to you before and while they are doing it.
In movies, TV shows, books stories. They tell exactly what is going on…with a twist…….they pretend the truth is fiction.
I always thought Dr StrangeLove was a written as a comedy. It was only after I’d worked at one of our national labs for a while that I realized it was really a documentary.
That right Ned, there is a lesson in the absurdity of that movie.
Loved the scene where Sellers is rying to get change to stop WW3. Before Maj. Batguano shoots the Coke machine, he tells him that he’ll have to answer to the President of the Coca-Cola Company.