Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – 3/5

Good entertainment and sadly still relevant over half a century later

„Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb“ is a co-production between the United States and United Kingdom from 1964 that is mostly in the English language. There are only very brief inclusions of Russian on one or two occasions, but the English-language original with German subtitles did not even have subs for these, so it is not really meant for you to understand the Russian language, just sit there as cluelessly basically as the rest of the gang. This is comfortably in the imdb top250, right now at position 68, which means it will stay in there for many, many years to come, hopefully not until the point when the same happens to us what happens to the characters in this movie in the end. It is a very long title, but not a long film as it makes it past the 1.5-hour mark, but still stays under 100 minutes. The title is also interesting for other reasons namely because the word „or“ in the sense of a clean cut and basically two titles in one is something you really don’t see too often with movies. Not back then over half a century ago, not nowadays. This is of course a movie by Stanley Kubrick, who directed this one and also co-wrote the script. Kubrick is considered by many one of the greatest if not the greatest filmmaker ever and many also consider this his best movie, so you understand what that means, even if he has quite a few works to pick from. Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of him, but still there is no denying his films are worth the watch. Kubrick was only 35 approximately when he shot this one, but still in terms of film quantity, half of his career was already over at that point because he was much more prolific in his earlier years than in the later decades of his life and career. Peter George is one of the other two writers and as he committed suicide not long after this one sadly, there is not much more to his body of work. Terry Southern had a longer and more successful career and this film is not the only one from him that resulted in an Oscar nomination.

This film was nominated for four Oscars in total, but did not win any, actually lost three categories, including Best Picture, to „My Fair Lady“. Writing was the only one where it lost to another film. Directing went to My Fair Lady too and Lead Actor as well. Peter Sellers of course scored the nomination here and he played three characters in this film alone, three supporting characters you could say that probably amounted in one lead performance from the Academy’s point of view. This was surely also something unusual by the 1960s that one actor played more than one, even more than two characters. People will maybe first remember the late 1930s film „The Wizard of Oz“ in terms of that and there, 25 years earlier, it was still much more common. Anyway, as for the subject here, it is a bit sad that the topic is now again much more current and relevant again than it has been for many decades and with that I am talking about a global war, nuclear war perhaps. Let’s hope it does not happen. Despite the serious background and all the drama, most will probably rather remember this film for its dark comedic side. The names of characters and locations are one thing where you see that the film does not want to be watched in an all-too-serious manner, but still it does get its message through. There was one play of word linked to „burping“ for example and the insane general who funnily keeps rambling about fluids from the body was called Jack Ripper. Now that is telling. The cast includes many familiar names and faces, some real stars of their time and not just Sellers whose salary I read was more than half of the film’s budget, but also Hayden and Scott of course stand out in terms of fame. Most people today will maybe recognize the name James Earl Jones from the cast because of all he did afterwards. He was not super young back then and had worked on other projects before that already, but still I am surprised to see him in this film. He is also the only Black cast member I think. He is 90 now and one not many still alive from the cast here. Another would be the slightly younger Glenn Beck.

In terms of females, it does not look much different. Tracy Reed is the only one and her character is apparently a secretary who takes a call when her boss can’t and the two are also having an affair it seems. There is no further elaboration on that, we only see her in underwear waiting for the important fella to return when her scene ends. Reed is no longer with us. She may have been the youngest cast member. Now the humor is sometimes pretty dark, but as everybody gets their fair share, it is pretty decent. One moment that stayed in the mind for me as the maybe funniest moment early on and one of the most bizarre of the film altogether was when the pilot takes his cowboy hat and is ready to give it to the Russians. Even if here we have a film showing us the situation from the American point of view and we have central characters who despise communism, this is never a propaganda movie. On the contrary, the real idiots here are the Americans because their lunatic general was the one who started it all and they also give a face to the Soviets by including the ambassador there, so it is not an invisible enemy and the talk about the Soviet leader being busy with women and maybe drunk on one occasion would have been offensive if there had been no lashing out against the Americans either. I mean they employed somebody really close to Hitler in a key position. They are sleazy enough to like the idea to basically repopulate the planet in the end when each of them would get ten attractive women. Or take the aforementioned crazy cowboy hat dude who is ready to literally ride the rocket in the end in the most patriotic fashion you could say. And let us not even talk about everything Jack Ripper says and does. Sellers has to bear with him in one of these roles. I knew Sellers was in this film, but I was not sure if he played the aforementioned character or if he played the title character, but now I see he played both and even the President of the United States. There I somewhat did not recognize him at all, but yeah, you can surely say he is the movie. Just like Kubrick is the movie as well.

This is of course a black-and-white film or I could cut the „of course“ because in the mid-1960s it was not a given anymore to do without color. I will just keep doing some brainstorming: About the unusual idea that we have two titles in one I already talked briefly, but it is also worth mentioning that Dr. Strangelove (another very metaphorical title) is included there, even as the first „half“ but this character does not have a lot of screen time, basically only two scenes and the reason for his significance is probably that the film ends with him and also he has the last words. And also that one way or the other they had to get in Nazi Germany again and his hand/arm having a life of its own depicted the character’s past and true allegiance. This film has almost 500,000 ratings on imdb, which shows you how immensely popular it is nowadays still. Of course, other films have seven-digit amounts even, but those are not as old as this one here, so from this perspective „Dr. Strangelove“ is clearly among the most defining works from the 1960s. A reason for that is also because it is way ahead of its time in terms of the message this film brings. As absurd as it may seem on a few occasions and also despite not every punch line working like a charm, the idea that never one person alone should be able to make a decision like this or at best that the military equipment that could eradicate life on the entire planet should be done away with is a position really progressive less than 20 years after World War II and especially during a time where the Cold War was getting slightly hotter already. This is maybe the most impressive and most important thing to take from this film.

As for the comedy, I am sure that everybody will have other inclusions and segments they like more than others. For me, the phone conversation between the two heads of state was a highlight. It began a bit stiff because the first allegedly funny moment did not do too much for me (the one in the seat next to me liked it more), but then it was one funny inclusion after the next when the two men were arguing for example who regrets the current situation more or if Sellers‘ character in general likes making a call to his communist counterpart. Speaking of seat neighbors, I was pretty delighted to see the room packed and there was not a single free seat anymore. Okay, it was not a huge room, but still. It is very nice if showings like these are sold out and people head to cinemas to watch old classic movies. This will hopefully encourage many other movie theaters to keep or start showing old films as well. Of course, there are great new films too, but also many forgettable and mediocre ones that are shown all week long. Give some love to the old ones! Also nice to see so many people there tonight in the light of this not being the only occasion the film was shown. I think it was on on three different other days at least, maybe more, so pretty cool tonight’s apparently final showing was sold out too. In the end, I still struggle with calling this a really outstanding watch or film, but the thumbs-up was never really in doubt, so my perception did not change a lot compared to how I saw the movie when I watched it for the first time probably now over ten years ago already. Not my favorite from Kubrick, but certainly worth seeing and the line „You can’t fight in here. This is the war room“ is just downright genius. I give them that. So yeah, go see this film if you don’t mind old black-and-white movies and haven’t watched it yet. Admittedly, it is not one that will trigger your interest if you disliked old films before, but it is worth watching. Also on the small screen. Bye, we’ll meet again.