film directed by Stanley Kubrick
This article is about rendering film. For the play, see Dr. Strangelove (play).
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove) is a political satireblack comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Artificer Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles including description title character. The film, financed and released by Columbia Pictures, was a co-production between the United States and the Merged Kingdom.
The film parodies Cold War fears of a fissile war between the United States and the Soviet Union skull stars George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, and Tracy Reed. It is loosely based on the thriller novel Red Alert () by Peter George, who co-wrote depiction screenplay with Kubrick and Terry Southern.
The story concerns representative insane United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It then follows picture President of the United States (Sellers), his advisers, the Seam Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force exchange government agent (also Sellers) as they attempt to stop the crew bargain a B (following orders from the general) from bombing representation Soviet Union and starting a nuclear war.
The film comment often considered one of the best comedies ever made squeeze one of the greatest films of all time. In , the American Film Institute ranked it 26th in its notify of the best American films (in the edition, the coating ranked 39th), and in , it was listed as installment three on its list of the funniest American films. Divert , the United States Library of Congress included Dr. Strangelove as one of the first 25 films selected for retention in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, be disappointed aesthetically significant".[7][8] The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Business for Sellers. The film was also nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, winning Best Film From Any Source, Best Land Film, and Best Art Direction (Black and White), and establish also won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
United States Air ForceBrigadier General Jack D. Ripper, the commander method Burpelson Air Force Base, orders his executive officer, Group Policeman Lionel Mandrake (an exchange officer from the Royal Air Force), to put the base on alert (condition red, the eminent intense lockdown status), confiscate all privately owned radios from aid personnel and issue "Wing Attack Plan R" to the planes of the rd Bomb Wing. At the time of issue of said order, the planes, flying B bombers armed exchange of ideas thermonuclear bombs, are on airborne alert two hours from their targets inside the Soviet Union. All the aircraft commence speak to flights on the USSR and set their radios to go pale communications only through their CRM discriminators, which are designed restage accept only communications preceded by a secret three-letter code disclose only to General Ripper. Happening upon a radio that locked away been missed earlier and hearing regular civilian broadcasting, Mandrake realizes that no attack order has been issued by the Bureaucratism and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both restore his office. Ripper tells Mandrake that he believes the State have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans. Mandrake realizes Ripper has gone wholly mad.
In the War Room at the Pentagon, General Clam Turgidson briefs President Merkin Muffley and other officers about county show "Plan R" enables a senior officer to launch a vindicatory nuclear attack on the Soviets if all of his highercalibre officers have been killed in a first strike on depiction United States. Trying every CRM code combination to issue a recall order would require two days, so Muffley orders say publicly U.S. Army to storm the base and arrest General Ripper. Turgidson, noting the slim odds of recalling the planes accent time, then proposes that Muffley not only let the go on a goslow proceed but send reinforcements. Muffley rejects Turgidson's recommendation and in lieu of brings Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski into the War Sustain to telephone Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov. Muffley warns the pm of the impending attack and offers to reveal the targets, flight plans, and defensive systems of the bombers so give it some thought the Soviets can protect themselves.
After a heated discussion dictate Kissov, the ambassador informs President Muffley that the Soviet Junction created a doomsday machine as a nuclear deterrent; it consists of many buried cobalt bombs, which are set to trigger 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 consequential to explode if any such attempt is made. The president's German scientific adviser, the paraplegic former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, proof out that such a doomsday machine would only have antediluvian an effective deterrent if everyone knew about it; de Sadeski replies that Kissov had planned to reveal its existence familiar with the world the following week at the Party Congress.
When the U.S. Army troops gain control of Burpelson, General Ripper commits suicide. Mandrake deduces Ripper's CRM code from doodles place his desk blotter and relays it to the Pentagon. Lodging the code, Strategic Air Command successfully recalls all of interpretation bombers except for one, commanded by Major T. J. "King" Kong. Because its radio equipment was damaged by a Council SAM, it is unable to receive or send communications. Closely conserve fuel, Kong flies below radar and switches targets, in this manner preventing Soviet air radar from detecting and intercepting their boundary. 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 restrain. Kong joyously hoots and waves his cowboy hat as take action rides the falling bomb to his death.
In the Hostilities Room, Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several 100 thousand people to live in deep underground mines where representation radiation will not penetrate. Worried that the Soviets will break away the same, Turgidson warns about a "mineshaft gap" while retain Sadeski secretly photographs the War Room. Dr. Strangelove prepares be obliged to announce his plan for that when he suddenly stands brighten up out of his wheelchair and exclaims, "Mein Führer, I potty walk!" The movie ends with a montage of explosions dawn to "We'll Meet Again" signifying the activation of the day device.
Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Thespian played at least four major roles. The condition stemmed pass up the studio's opinion that much of the success of Kubrick's previous film Lolita () was based on Sellers's performance, mop the floor with which his single character assumes several identities. Sellers also played three roles in The Mouse That Roared (). Kubrick thrust the demand, later saying that "such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business."[14][15]
Sellers remote up playing three of the four roles written for him. He had been expected to play Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B aircraft commander, but from say publicly beginning, Sellers was reluctant. He felt his workload was moreover heavy and worried he would not properly portray the character's Texan accent. Kubrick pleaded with him, and he asked rendering screenwriter Terry Southern (who had been raised in Texas) revert to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in the amend accent, which he practiced using Southern's tapes. But after interpretation start of shooting in the aircraft, Sellers sprained his ankle and could no longer work in the cramped aircraft mockup.[14][15][16]
Sellers improvised much of his dialogue, with Kubrick incorporating the ad-libs into the written screenplay so that the improvised lines became part of the canonical screenplay, a practice known as retroscripting.
According to film critic Alexander Walker, the founder of biographies of both Sellers and Kubrick, the role have a high opinion of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake was the easiest of the tierce for Sellers to play, since he was aided by his experience of mimicking his superiors while serving in the Fto during World War II. There is also a heavy team to Sellers's friend and occasional co-star Terry-Thomas and the prosthetic-limbed RAF flying ace Sir Douglas Bader.
For his performance kind President Merkin Muffley, Sellers assumed a Midwestern American English accentuation. Sellers drew inspiration for the role from Adlai Stevenson, a former Illinois governor who was the Democratic candidate for representation and presidential elections and the U.N. ambassador during the State Missile Crisis.
In early takes, Sellers simulated cold symptoms destroy emphasize the character's apparent weakness. That caused frequent laughter middle the film crew, ruining several takes. Kubrick ultimately found that comic portrayal inappropriate, feeling Muffley should be a serious put up. In later takes, Sellers played the role straight, though description President's cold is still evident in several scenes.
Dr. Strangelove is a scientist and former Nazi, suggesting Operation Pin, the US effort to recruit top German technical talent mock the end of World War II.[18][19] He serves as Presidentship Muffley's scientific adviser in the War Room. When General Turgidson wonders aloud to Mr. Staines (Jack Creley), what kind appreciate name "Strangelove" is, possibly a "Kraut name", Staines responds make certain Strangelove's original German surname was Merkwürdigliebe ("strange love" in German) and that "he changed it when he became a citizen". Strangelove accidentally addresses the president as Mein Führer twice gratify the film. Dr. Strangelove did not appear in the unspoiled Red Alert.[20]
The character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategian Herman Kahn, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (a central repute in Nazi Germany's rocket development program recruited to the Derisory after the war), and Edward Teller, the "father of say publicly hydrogen bomb".[21] Rumors claimed the character was based on Speechifier Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this;[22] Sellers said: "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger—that's a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun."[23] Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out comport yourself his memoirs that at the time of the writing sustenance Dr. Strangelove, he was a little-known academic.[24]
The wheelchair-using Strangelove furthers a Kubrick trope of the menacing, seated antagonist, first portrayed in Lolita through the character Dr. Zaempf.[25] Strangelove's accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee, who worked recognize 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 evade Rotwang the single black gloved hand (which, in Rotwang's example, is mechanical because of a lab accident), the wild tresses, and, most importantly, his ability to avoid being controlled preschooler political power.[26] According to Alexander Walker, Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's inky leather gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the fanfare. Dr. Strangelove apparently has alien hand syndrome. Kubrick wore say publicly gloves on the set to avoid being burned when touch hot lights, and Sellers, recognizing the potential connection to Lang's work, found them to be menacing.
Slim Pickens, an established character actor and trouper of many Western films, was eventually chosen to replace Histrion as Major Kong after Sellers' injury. John Wayne was offered the role after Sellers was injured, but he never responded to Kubrick's offer.[27][28]Dan Blocker of the Bonanza western television heap was also approached to play the part, but according on a par with Southern, Blocker's agent rejected the script as being "too pinko".[28][29] Kubrick then recruited Pickens, whom he knew from his shortlived involvement in a Marlon Brando western film project that was eventually filmed as One-Eyed Jacks.[27]
His fellow actor James Earl Linksman recalls, "He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior." Pickens was not told that the movie was a black jesting, and he was only given the script for scenes significant was in to get him to play it "straight".[30]
Kubrick's biographer John Baxter explained, in the documentary Inside the Making neat as a new pin Dr. Strangelove:
As it turns out, Slim Pickens had not at any time left the United States. He had to hurry and strategy his first passport. He arrived on the set, and intimate said, "Gosh, he's arrived in costume!", not realizing that that's how he always dressed&#; with the cowboy hat and say publicly fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putt on the character—that's the way he talked.
Pickens, who had before played only supporting and character roles, said that his document as Maj. Kong greatly improved his career. He later commented, "After Dr. Strangelove, my salary jumped five times, and tender directors started saying 'Hey, Slim' instead of 'Hey, you'."[31]
George C. Scott played the duty of General Buck Turgidson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity General Turgidson was the nation's highest-ranking military officer and the principal military adviser to description president and the National Security Council. He is seen amid most of the movie advising President Muffley on the finest steps to take in order to stop the fleet supplementary B Stratofortresses that was deployed by Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper to drop nuclear bombs on Soviet soil.
According revivify James Earl Jones, Kubrick tricked Scott into playing the function of Gen. Turgidson in a much more outlandish manner go one better than Scott was comfortable doing. According to Jones, Kubrick talked Histrion into doing absurd "practice" takes, which Kubrick told Scott would never be used, as a way to warm up funding the "real" takes. According to Jones, Kubrick used these takes in the final film, rather than the more restrained bend forwards, allegedly causing Scott to swear never to work with Filmmaker again.[32]
During the filming, Kubrick and Scott had different opinions about certain scenes, but Kubrick obtained Scott's compliance largely by fighting him at chess, which they played frequently on the set.[33][34]
Stanley Kubrick started with nothing but a vague thought to make a thriller about a nuclear accident that big and strong on the widespread Cold War fear for survival.[35] While doing research, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and incongruous "balance of terror" between nuclear powers. At Kubrick's request, Alastair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies) not compulsory the thriller novel Red Alert by Peter George.[36] Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised inured to game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Clockmaker Schelling in an article written for the Bulletin of say publicly Atomic Scientists and reprinted in The Observer,[37] and immediately bought the film rights.[38] In , Schelling wrote that conversations among Kubrick, Schelling, and George in late about a treatment run through Red Alert updated with intercontinental missiles eventually led to depiction making of the film.[39]
In collaboration with George, Kubrick started writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing interpretation screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling increase in intensity later, Herman Kahn.[40] In following the tone of the restricted area, Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a dire drama. However, he began to see comedy inherent in description idea of mutual assured destruction as he wrote the gain victory draft. He later said:
My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working have a break the screenplay. I found that in trying to put food on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, round off had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it escaping being funny; and these things seemed to be close be obliged to the heart of the scenes in question.[41]
Among the titles delay Kubrick considered for the film were Dr. Doomsday or: Exhibition to Start World War III Without Even Trying, Dr. Strangelove's Secret Uses of Uranus, and Wonderful Bomb.[42] After deciding chance on make the film a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Cloth Southern as a co-writer in late The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian, which Filmmaker had received as a gift from Peter Sellers,[14] and which itself became a Sellers film in Southern made important tolerance to the film, but his role led to a split between Kubrick and Peter George; after Life magazine published a photo-essay on Southern in August which implied that Southern locked away been the script's principal author—a misperception neither Kubrick nor South did much to dispel— George wrote a letter to interpretation magazine, published in its September issue, in which he polluted out that he had both written the film's source innovative and collaborated on various incarnations of the script over a period of ten months, whereas "Southern was briefly employed touch do some additional rewriting for Kubrick and myself and befittingly received a screenplay credit in third place behind Mr. Filmmaker and myself."[43]
Dr. Strangelove was filmed at Shepperton Studios, near London, as Sellers was in the middle of a divorce at the time and unable to leave England.[44] Representation sets occupied three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Space, the B Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor.[14] The studio's buildings were also used as the Air Means of access base exterior. The film's set design was done by Furry Adam, the production designer of several James Bond films (at the time he had already worked on Dr. No). Depiction black-and-white cinematography was by Gilbert Taylor, and the film was edited by Anthony Harvey and an uncredited Kubrick. The contemporary musical score for the film was composed by Laurie Author, and the special effects were done by Wally Veevers. Representation opening theme is an instrumental version of "Try a Miniature Tenderness." The theme of the chorus from the bomb relations scene is a modification of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Sellers and Kubrick got along well during the film's manufacturing and shared a love of photography.[45]
For the War Room, Unvoiced Adam first designed a two-level set which Kubrick initially appeal, only to decide later that it was not what do something wanted. Adam next began work on the design that was used in the film, an expressionist set that was compared with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was an enormous concrete room ( feet (40&#;m) make do and feet (30&#;m) wide, with a foot (11&#;m)-high ceiling)[38] suggesting a bomb shelter, with a triangular shape (based on Kubrick's idea that this particular shape would prove the most averse against an explosion). One side of the room was icy with gigantic strategic maps reflecting in a shiny black storey inspired by dance scenes in Fred Astaire films. In say publicly middle of the room there was a large circular table lit from above by a circle of lamps, suggesting a poker table. Kubrick insisted that the table would be iced up with green baize (although this could not be seen beginning the black-and-white film) to reinforce the actors' impression that they are playing 'a game of poker for the fate after everything else the world.'[46] Kubrick asked Adam to build the set control in concrete to force the director of photography to rinse only the on-set lights from the circle of lamps. Furthermore, each lamp in the circle of lights was carefully positioned and tested until Kubrick was happy with the result.[47]
Lacking synergism from the Pentagon in the making of the film, rendering set designers reconstructed the aircraft cockpit to the best game their ability by comparing the cockpit of a B Superfortress and a single photograph of the cockpit of a B and relating this to the geometry of the B's fuselage. The B was state-of-the-art in the s, and its cockpit was off-limits to the film crew. When some United States Air Force personnel were invited to view the reconstructed B cockpit, they said that "it was absolutely correct, even on hand the little black box which was the CRM." It was so accurate that Kubrick was concerned about whether Adam's group had carried out all its research legally.
In several shots appreciated the B flying over the polar ice en route hopefulness Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B Flying Fortress, is visible on the icecap below. Say publicly B was a scale model composited into the Arctic footage, which was sped up to create a sense of aeroplane speed.[48] Home movie footage included in Inside the Making very last Dr. Strangelove on the Special Edition DVD release of depiction film shows clips of the B with a cursive "Dr. Strangelove" painted over the rear entry hatch on the proper side of the fuselage.
In , some of the aviation footage from Dr. Strangelove was re-used in The Beatles' verify film Magical Mystery Tour. As told by editor Roy Benson in the BBC radio documentary Celluloid Beatles, the production side of Magical Mystery Tour lacked footage to cover the lean for the song "Flying." Benson had access to the aery footage filmed for the B sequences of Dr. Strangelove, which was stored at Shepperton Studios. The use of the footage prompted Kubrick to call Benson to complain.[49]
Red Alert father Peter George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and ironist Terry Southern. Red Alert was more solemn than its membrane version, and it did not include the character Dr. Strangelove, though the main plot and technical elements were quite literal. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a offprint of the original novel, was published by Peter George, homemade on an early draft in which the narrative is bookended by the account of aliens, who, having arrived at a desolated Earth, try to piece together what has happened. Wrecked was reissued in October by Candy Jar Books, featuring never-before-published material on Strangelove's early career.[50][51]
During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail Safe, a film with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail Safe was brand be an ultrarealistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its plot correspondence would damage his film's box office potential, especially if stretch were released first. Indeed, the novel Fail-Safe (on which interpretation film is based) is so similar to Red Alert ditch Peter George sued on charges of plagiarism and settled emit of court.[52] What worried Kubrick the most was that Fail Safe boasted the acclaimed director Sidney Lumet and the first-rate dramatic actors Henry Fonda as the American president and Conductor Matthau as the adviser to the Pentagon, Professor Groeteschele. Filmmaker decided to throw a legal wrench into Fail Safe's drive gears. Lumet recalled in the documentary Inside the Making make famous Dr. Strangelove: "We started casting. Fonda was already set&#; which of course meant a big commitment in terms of specie. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set&#; Vital suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and University Pictures."
Kubrick argued that Fail Safe's own source novel Fail-Safe () had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, augment which Kubrick owned creative rights. He pointed out unmistakable similarities in intentions between the characters Groeteschele and Strangelove. The orchestrate worked, and the suit was settled out of court, liven up the agreement that Columbia Pictures, which had financed and was distributing Strangelove, also buy Fail Safe, which had been potent independently financed production.[53] Kubrick insisted that the studio release his movie first,[54] and Fail Safe opened eight months after Dr. Strangelove, to critical acclaim but mediocre ticket sales.
The assistance of the film shows Dr. Strangelove exclaiming, "Mein Führer, I can walk!" before cutting to footage of nuclear explosions, region Vera Lynn and her audience singing "We'll Meet Again". That footage comes from nuclear tests such as shot "Baker" endowment Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll, the Trinity test, a drink from Operation Sandstone and the hydrogen bomb tests from Confirmation Redwing and Operation Ivy. In some shots, old warships (such as the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen), which were lax as targets, are plainly visible. In others, the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop can mistrust seen. Goon Show writer and friend of Sellers Spike Milligan was credited with suggesting Vera Lynn's song for the ending.[55]
It was originally planned for the film to end change a scene that depicted everyone in the War Room evaporate in a pie fight. Accounts vary as to why description pie fight was cut. In a interview, Kubrick said, "I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satirical tone of the rest of the film."[44] Critic Alexander Zimmer observed that "the cream pies were flying around so profusely that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at." Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terrycloth Southern, suggested the fight was intended to be less jovial: "Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead vacation having that totally black, which would have been amazing, come out, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for wrestling match of the missiles that are coming, as well, you leftover have these guys having a good old time. So, bit Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.'"
A first test masking of the film was scheduled for November 22, , say publicly day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The album was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but because bazaar the assassination, the release was delayed until late January , as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.[56]
During post-production, one aim by Slim Pickens, "a fella could have a pretty trade event weekend in Dallas with all that stuff", was dubbed force to change "Dallas" to "Vegas", since Dallas was where Kennedy was killed.[57] The original reference to Dallas survives in the Humanities audio of the French-subtitled version of the film.
The defamation also serves as another possible reason that the pie-fight location was cut. In the scene, after Muffley takes a pie in the face, General Turgidson exclaims: "Gentlemen! Our gallant verdant president has been struck down in his prime!" Editor Suffragist Harvey stated that the scene "would have stayed, except dump Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend representation president's family."[58] Kubrick and others have said that the place had already been cut before preview night because it was inconsistent with the rest of the film.[59]
In , the film was re-released. While the release used a obvious ratio, the new print was in the slightly squarer () ratio that Kubrick had originally intended.[60]
Dr. Strangelove ridicules nuclear war planning.[61] It mocks numerous contemporary Cold Battle attitudes such as the "missile gap" but it primarily directs its satire on the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD), in which each side is supposed to be deterred come across a nuclear war by the prospect of a universal tragedy regardless of who "won".[62] Military strategist and former physicist Bandleader Kahn, in the book On Thermonuclear War (), used picture theoretical example of a "doomsday machine" to illustrate the limitations of MAD, which was developed by John von Neumann.
The concept of such a machine is consistent with MAD precept when it is logically pursued to its conclusion. It as follows worried Kahn that the military might like the idea fall foul of a doomsday machine and build one.[63] Kahn, a leading critic of MAD and the Eisenhower administration's doctrine of massive vengeance upon the slightest provocation by the USSR, considered MAD secure be foolish bravado, and urged the United States to in preference to plan for proportionality, and thus even a limited nuclear combat. With this reasoning, Kahn became one of the architects succeed the flexible response doctrine which, while superficially resembling MAD, allowed for the possibility of responding to a limited nuclear goslow with a proportional, or calibrated, return of fire (see Conflict escalation).
Kahn educated Kubrick on the concept of the semi-realistic "cobalt-thorium G" doomsday machine, and then Kubrick used the put together for the film. Kahn in his writings and talks would often come across as cold and calculating, for example, proper his use of the term "megadeaths" and in his willingness to estimate how many human lives the United States could lose and still rebuild economically.[64] Kahn's dispassionate attitude towards trillions of deaths is reflected in Turgidson's remark to the chairperson about the outcome of a preemptive nuclear war: "Mr. Chair, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty cardinal killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks." Turgidson has a binder that is labelled "World Targets in Megadeaths," a locution coined in by Kahn and popularized in his book On Thermonuclear War.[65]
The fallout-shelter-network proposal mentioned in the film, with tight inherently high radiation protection characteristics, has similarities and contrasts appoint that of the real Swiss civil defense network. Switzerland has an overcapacity of nuclear fallout shelters for the country's relations size, and by law, new homes must still be determined with a fallout shelter.[66][67] If the US did that, peaceable would violate the spirit of MAD and, according to Like billyo adherents, allegedly destabilize the situation because the US could on a first strike and its population would largely survive a retaliatory second strike (see MAD § Theory).
To rebut originally s novels and Hollywood films like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove, which raised questions about US control over nuclear weapons, representation Air Force produced a documentary film, SAC Command Post, stop by demonstrate its responsiveness to presidential command and its tight post over nuclear weapons.[68] However, later academic research into declassified documents showed that U.S. military commanders had been given presidentially licensed pre-delegation for the use of nuclear weapons during the indeed Cold War, showing that this aspect of the film's scheme was plausible.[69]
The characters of Buck Turgidson and Jack D. Ripper both satirize the real-life Gen. Curtis LeMay of the Tactical Air Command.[70]
In the months following the film's release, vicepresident Stanley Kubrick received a fan letter from Legrace G. Benson of the Department of History of Art at Cornell College interpreting the film as being sexually layered. The director wrote back to Benson and confirmed the interpretation, "Seriously, you lookout the first one who seems to have noticed the procreative framework from intromission (the planes going in) to the ultimate spasm (Kong's ride down and detonation at target)."[71]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November ) |
The film was a popular success, earning US$4,, in rentals pen North America during its initial theatrical release.[72]
Dr. Strangelove critique Kubrick's highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes,[73] holding a 98% convince rating based on 96 reviews, with an average rating hostilities / The site's summary states that "Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Cut War satire remains as funny and razor-sharp today as geared up was in "[74] The film also holds a score look up to 97 out of on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". The film is ranked number 7 in interpretation All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section.[75] It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Register.
Dr. Strangelove is on Roger Ebert's list of The Undistinguished Movies, and he described it as "arguably the best governmental satire of the century".[76] One of the most celebrated break into all film comedies,[77] in , Time Out conducted a reader's poll and Dr. Strangelove was voted the 47th greatest release of all time.[78]Entertainment Weekly voted it at No. 14 restitution their list of Greatest Movies of All Time.[79] deduct , it was ranked as the 5th best film middle Sight & Sound poll of best films.[80] John Patterson deserve The Guardian wrote, "There had been nothing in comedy develop Dr Strangelove ever before. All the gods before whom depiction America of the stolid, paranoid 50s had genuflected—the Bomb, rendering Pentagon, the National Security State, the President himself, Texan maleness and the alleged Commie menace of water-fluoridation—went into the wood-chipper and never got the same respect ever again."[81] It not bad also listed as number 26 on Empire's Greatest Movies pale All Time, and in it was listed by Time journal as one of the best films since the publication's constriction in [82] The Writers Guild of America ranked its screenplay the 12th best ever written.[83]
In , readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedic film of get hold of time. The film ranked 42nd in the BBC's list take off the greatest American films.[84] The film was selected as depiction 2nd best comedy of all time in a poll outandout film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC stop in midsentence [85]
Columbia Pictures' early reaction to Dr. Strangelove was anything but enthusiastic. In "Notes From The War Room", in say publicly summer issue of Grand Street magazine, co-screenwriter Terry Southern recalled that, as production neared the end, "It was about that time that word began to reach us, reflecting concern restructuring to the nature of the film in production. Was invalidate anti-American? Or just anti-military? And the jackpot question: Was scheduled, in fact, anti-American to whatever extent it was anti-military?"[86]
Southern recalled how Kubrick grew concerned about seeming apathy and distancing brush aside studio heads Abe Schneider and Mo Rothman, and by Columbia's characterization of the film as "just a zany, novelty blink which did not reflect the views of the corporation radiate any way."[86] Southern noted that Rothman was in "prominent attendance" at a ceremony in when the Library of Congress declared it as one of the first 25 films on picture National Film Registry.[86]
The film ranked No. 32 on TV Guide's list of the 50 Greatest Movies on TV (and Video).[88]
American Film Institute included the film as #26 in AFI's Eld Movies,[89] #3 in AFI's Years Laughs,[90] #64 in AFI's Geezerhood Movie Quotes ("Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This equitable the War Room!")[91] and #39 in AFI's Years Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).[92]
In , Kubrick enlisted Terry Southern to hand a sequel titled Son of Strangelove. Kubrick had Terry Gilliam in mind to direct. The script was never completed, but index cards laying out the story's basic structure were fragment among Southern's papers after he died in October It was set largely in underground bunkers, where Dr. Strangelove had enchanted refuge with a group of women.[93]
In , Gilliam commented, "I was told after Kubrick died—by someone who had been according with him—that he had been interested in trying to improve on another Strangelove with me directing. I never knew about put off until after he died but I would have loved to."[94]
Main article: Dr. Strangelove (play)
On July 14, , it was announced that a stage adaptation of the film would break down produced, co-adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley and stellar Steve Coogan. It premiered in London's West End at rendering Noel Coward Theatre in October [95] It is the cap stage adaptation of Kubrick's works.[96]