Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens
"Peace is Our Profession"
For years I have heard about this movie; have seen it listed on "Top 100 Movies", "Top 100 Comedy Movies", and "1001 Movies You Have to See Before You Die". I bought the movie a few years ago and put it on the shelf with my many other movies, thinking "I will get to this one when I am in the mood for something funny".
I am not going to lie to you; I found the movie extremely funny. My sense of humor is also as dry as the Sahara desert. This is not a slapstick comedy by any means [regardless of George C. Scott's Olympic-worthy back roll in the War Room or Dr. Strangelove's uncontrollable Nazi right arm], it is pure satire.
A friend of mine saw the movie "Shoot 'Em Up" not too long ago and after viewing it she told me that it just seemed too over the top and ridiculous. I then informed her that the movie itself was supposed to be a satire of action movies, which is why it was tongue-in-cheek representing the over-the-top tendencies of the genre.
Even though Dr. Strangelove starts out looking like newsreel footage from the 1940's, don't let the serious narration and the serious classical music fool you. Slim Pickens [as Major T.J. Kong] is the only actor who was allegedly not informed that this movie was supposed to be comedic. His performance of himself as a US Air Force Pilot is perfection. Most of his lines consisted of him reading from the instructions for their mission [Plan R] or requesting the other men on the aircraft to push buttons and flip switches, but yet he lent it such a realism that I was half tempted to look him up online and see if he had ever actually been a pilot. One of the first hints that this movie might not be entirely serious is when the camera shows the activities of the Air Force pilots while waiting at their fail safe point - reading a novel, looking at a Playboy magazine, eating, and sleeping.
Peter Sellers [in one of his three roles, here as Group Captain Lionel Mandrake] works in what has to be the loudest room in history; completely full of old school computers and printers and what look like several reel-to-reel machines. When he is told about Plan R being put into place, his initial reaction is that it will certainly get a rise out of the men [thinking that it is a drill, not the real thing]. His stiff-upper-lip Britishness and absolute refusal to give in to the madness of those around him make him a little neurotic, but who can blame him? He gets locked into an office with Sterling Hayden [Gen. Jack D Ripper] whose infatuation with preserving the purity of our water supply [keeping it free of fluoride] and thus maintaining the security of our "precious bodily fluids" would drive anyone over the edge.
We are then introduced to Tracy Reed [who looks eerily similar to Natalie Wood], lounging around in her severely underwired bra, underwear and [of course] heels. I'm thinking that she [or Kubrick] may have started the fad that "bad girls" keep their shoes on while performing bad deeds. While she has one of the most obnoxious conversations ever [second only to the later phone conversations with Dimitri, the Russian Premier], speaking in a low voice to the person on the telephone then "playing telephone" by shouting the responses to the man in the bathroom, who is none other than the great George C. Scott [Gen. Buck Turgidson], we learn that George is being called by the President to the War Room in the Pentagon. Though George promises Tracy that he will be back before she can say "blastoff", I've seen enough disaster movies to know that poor Tracy will be going to bed alone.
One of the things that crossed my mind while watching a movie full of "Top Secret" documents is that I would like a huge "Top Secret" stamp to have. I'm not sure what I would use it on, but it would be an interesting conversation piece:
"Is that a Top Secret stamp you have there?"
"I'm sorry, I can't talk about it. I'm afraid that's classified."
Sterling Hayden [pre-locking Peter Sellers in his office] requests a grain alcohol with rain water. I wrote that down because I thought that was odd and was sure that it would not be brought up again, but it turned out that it was actually a somewhat valid plot point. Still, it's just a weird thing to have a bottle of rainwater in your office. [See above note about fluoride in the water and "precious bodily fluids"]
When I was researching this movie a little bit, I came across an interesting fact. When Kubrick was designing the War Room, he requested that the huge round table [with its infinite supply of telephones] be covered in green felt like a poker table because the politicians and leaders were gambling with the lives of their citizens [if they played their cards rights, only like 10 - 20 million of them]. Because the film is, in fact, black and white, you can't really tell. It's a greenish shade of gray, though, if you look at it correctly. One character says "Today, war is too important to be left to the politicians" and I think [in that one case] he was absolutely right.
I'll stop with the play-by-play and I certainly do not want to ruin the movie for anyone, but I certainly think that it is worth watching. Peter Sellers plays two other characters: President Merkin Muffley [the only sane person in the War Room and who has a super awkward conversation with the Russian Premier while fifty people were listening in] and Dr. Strangelove, an ex-Nazi scientist whose right arm did not get the memo about the "ex" part. Sellers is such a brilliant character actor that every character is treated as a different personality by Sellers rather than just a different "mood" or expression. His President is contained, his Dr. Strangelove is zany and permanently smiling, and his Mandrake is stodgy and not willing to engage. I don't want to overuse this word, but seriously, this man was brilliant.
I read several notes that stated George C. Scott was upset because Kubrick convinced him to do "test shots" of scenes where he was made to overact, which were then used in the movie. George's manic and passionate character felt more real than any of those leaders in the War Room [besides the President]. He also may have chewed nine hundred pieces of gum at the same time, which were hopefully not swallowed when he did an unscripted back roll on the floor and then kept walking and talking as if nothing had happened.
As an added bonus, James Earl Jones is in this movie as a bombardier on the aircraft with Slim Pickens. If you don't recognize his young face, the moment he starts talking you will go "Oh, wait a second ... I know that guy ..."
So, to sum up: The Big Board in the War Room is pretty big, you just can't trust those "Ruskies", Nuclear War is bad, "Prevert" is apparently the correct way to pronounce the word "Pervert", you can call the President collect in times of emergency, don't ever call the Russian Premier because he will act like a whiny little brother, and of course "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
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