Dr Strangelove (1964)

Film: Dr Strangelove

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Country: USA / UK

Released: January 1964

Runtime: 94 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Studio: Columbia

Influenced: Robert Altman, Terry Gilliam, Tarantino, Lynne Ramsay, Armando Iannucci

After making a name for himself with a series of well-received Hollywood films, including The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960), US-British director Stanley Kubrick escaped the Cold War fever pitch of early 1960s America and moved to the English countryside in 1961. His next two films, Lolita (1962) and Dr Strangelove (1964) – subtitled How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Bomb – were shot primarily in the UK, the inspiration for the latter coming from a serious novel called Red Alert by Peter George, published in 1958. The book dealt with a hypothetical scenario in which a US Air Force General goes rogue and orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, which cannot be recalled. The novel was written as a thriller, but Kubrick saw the potential for a darker, more satirical take on the story.

Kubrick worked with the writer Terry Southern to develop the screenplay for the film. They added several new characters and subplots, including the character of Dr Strangelove, a wheelchair-bound former Nazi scientist who advises the US President on nuclear strategy. After seeing Peter Sellers assume multiple identities in Lolita, Columbia agreed to finance the film on the condition that Sellers was again given several roles to play, and Kubrick reluctantly agreed. Initially Sellers was scheduled to play four characters – RAF officer Mandrake, US President Muffley, Dr Strangelove and Major Kong – but for various reasons he ended up only taking on the first three.

Released at the height of the Cold War, Dr Strangelove deserves the highest praise for artistic bravery, a Hollywood-backed film with some sacred cows in its sights – nuclear annihilation, masculinity, American foreign policy, the Pentagon and Red Scare paranoia about Commie infiltration (hence the plot line about "impure fluids", based on the perceived menace of water-fluoridation). Inevitably, Columbia initially distanced itself from the film for fear of it being seen as anti-American, but later came to embrace the movie after it won critical plaudits. Perhaps Kubrick's most daring decision was to show the US President being advised by a Nazi scientist, with one of the film's most comic and unsettling scenes when Sellers (as Dr Strangelove) begins to uncontrollably salute and exclaim "Mein Führer! I can walk!" after revealing that he has a mechanical arm.

Kubrick shot the film at Shepperton Studios in black and white, adding to the film's bleak and darkly comic tone, and worked with Southern to add various comedic elements and absurd situations, such as the scene in which B-52 commander Major Kong rides a nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull as it falls towards its target: "Well boys, I reckon this is it... nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Ruskies". The film is full of iconic lines and moments of breaking the fourth wall, like when General "Buck" Turgidson (played brilliantly by George C. Scott) turns to the camera and directly addresses the audience, explaining the concept of a mineshaft gap. He also utters the classic line to the US President: "Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole programme because of a single slip-up, sir", a reference to the issuing of Wing Attack Plan R by Brigadier General Jack D Ripper. British understatement by an American genius.