(not Kubrick)
Posted on 01/29/2024 11:02:04 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Stanley Kubrick’s sharp and persuasive comedy about nuclear war remains a hilarious act of provocation
Sixty years ago, Columbia Pictures released the first of two black-and-white movies with the exact same premise: what if American planes with hydrogen bombs were inadvertently ordered to drop their payload on targets in the Soviet Union, potentially triggering an all-out nuclear war that wipe out humanity? The Cuban missile crisis had pushed the superpowers to the brink of conflict less than two years earlier, and film-makers were unusually eager to face their cold war nightmares head on.
~snip~
On balance, Kubrick’s message is more persuasive. Dr Strangelove remains the greatest of movie satires for a host of reasons, not least that it hews so closely to the real-life absurdities of the cold war, with two saber-rattling superpowers escalating an arms race that could only end in mutual annihilation. There’s absolutely no question, for example, that the top military and political brass have gamed out the catastrophic loss of life in a nuclear conflict, just as they do in the war room here. Perhaps they would even nod sagely at the distinction between 20 million people dead v 150 million people dead. All Kubrick and his co-writers, Terry Southern and Peter George, have to add is a wry punchline: “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
(not Kubrick)
Exactly—the Biden WH and Cabinet are exactly what the movie was predicting.
Each character was more disgusting than the last one—and just when you thought it could not get worse—it did.
That’s 3:35 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.
The movie release date was delayed when the USAF stepped in and had to investigate how the cockpit design for the movie was incredibly close to reality.
Kubrick probably got the launch codes correct as well.
:-)
There was speculation that both General Ripper and Gen. Turgidson were based partly on Curtis Lemay. Not sure if that was true or not. However, my father was friends with Gen. Lemay, and I'm sure there was nothing to be offended about. It was satire, of course, and having a clever sense of humor about nuclear annihilation would have been quite handy for the Air Force brass back in the early 60's.
Incidentally, Peace is Our Profession was the actual motto of the Strategic Air Command. There's no way Kubrick could have made that one up!
You were supposed to watch it and think, Far Out, man!
The Godfather is the ultimate guy flick. That whole script is quotable.
So sad that idiots still walk among us.
Good shout.
Us Brits went into full on Armageddon panic for the whole of 1983-84. I was maybe 8 years old when it came on telly and we watched it as a family. Our school had the old WW2 Anderson shelters, and they tested the sirens and we even had drills. Pointless really; the Anderson shelters were dug into a hill but we would’ve fried in them if the bomb had been dropped.
“Threads” is cut into documentary form on YouTube, but even the original’s likely to bore the pants off a British audience these days. It scared our parents more than us kids at the time, but the older you get the more the news documentary elements of it resonate.
What REALLY scared the pants off us was THIS book... which was written at the same time as Threads, and makes Threads look tame by comparison. And get this folks - this was a children’s book.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/brother-in-the-land/robert-swindells/9780241331231.
We had multiple copies of it in primary school, because it was so popular a read. Primary school in Britain’s for 5 to 11 year olds. But the youngest kids were banned from reading it, because one girl did and she cried for a month. Swindells was the go-to guy for horror in the school library, after Nicholas Fisk (Swindells wrote several books with serious horror in them; one had a kid subject himself to a Viking funeral while still alive I think.)
“When the Wind Blows” is also more horrific than Threads, but in a traditionally British understated way. A retired couple are trying to follow the government’s “Protect and Survive” guide. Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pJKdTqYijY
(Yes, it really is by the same guy who did “The Snowman”. Apocalypse fiction was for kids over here.)
The German series “Deutschland 83” was a decent fictionalised story of what was going on in east Germany around the same time with the last two episodes being based on the Able Archer incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83
Fail Safe came out the same year, it was the much more serious fit on Nuclear Conflict and had a great cast in it including Walter Matthau as a kind of Dr. Strangelove/Henry Kissinger type. He just about stole the film.
I saw that film when it came out and I was 9, saw Fail Safe also, probably did not understand all the complexities but I liked the films and appreciate them more now as an adult, Fail Safe is the really serious film that I watch again and find it even more scary and compelling than when it came out.
The Peace on Earth/Purity of Essence stuff was off the charts brilliant satire.
It went way over the head of most folks.
LOL! That’s one of the best scenes!
Fail Safe and On The Beach were brilliant films that scared me to death.
They were grim.
Maybe. But satire doesn’t age well. Strangelove does. That’s mostly because of Peter Sellers (though Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens were also good).
One reason satire doesn’t age well is that the people who made the satires turn out to be the rulers in the next generation or two and have faults like the rulers they replaced.
Ok...you just scared the crap out of me...because you are right on target!
“Threads” makes those movies look like a comedy.
Hence my screen name
On The Beach was even n=more scarier to me than Fail Safe, the ending was so grim. Although Fred Astaire went out the way I would want to go.
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