Dr. Strangelove

Film Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1964

Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), directed by Stanley Kubrick, is a cinematic black comedy that mocks the nuclear arms race, blending entertaining slapstick with insightful social commentary. Kubrick's use of storytelling devices, ranging from names suggestive of personality traits to hilarious dialogue closely modeled on well-known debates on nuclear strategy, make the film's larger themes accessible to most audiences.

The movie takes place in three locations: the fictional Burpelson Air Force Base, home of the 843rd Bomb Wing; the Pentagon's “war room”; and on board a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber. Burpleson's insane commander, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), convinced that fluoridation of drinking water is a communist plot to “sap and impurify” America's “precious bodily fluids,” unilaterally launches his bomb-laden aircraft against the Soviet Union. The president, Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers)—unable to contact Ripper and unwilling to launch the remainder of Strategic Air Command to make use of the 843rd Wing's “head-start”—sends the Army to capture the general and extract the code necessary to recall the bombers. Ripper's deputy, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (also Sellers), discovers Ripper's derangement and demands the recall code, but the general commits suicide as the Army takes control of the base. Nonetheless, Mandrake determines the code and communicates it to the president, but only after Col. “Bat” Guano (Keenan Wynn)—suspicious of Ripper's death and Mandrake's imagined involvement—first threatens to hold Mandrake, whom he regards as a “deviated PRE-vert,” incommunicado.

Muffley recalls all the bombers except one, whose damaged radio can't receive the order. At this point, Soviet Ambassador De Sadeski (Peter Bull) reveals the existence of an impossible-to-disarm Soviet “Doomsday Device,” which will destroy the world if any nuclear weapon detonates on Soviet territory. Muffley's civilian nuclear strategist, the ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove (also Sellers), confirms the device's practicability. When he asks why it had been kept secret, negating the deterrent effect, the ambassador says it was to be revealed on Monday because, “the Premier loves surprises.” Muffley and Soviet Premier Kissov work to intercept the errant bomber, but to no avail, because the damaged aircraft has switched targets to one within range of its leaking fuel. After jury-rigging the electrical wiring to open the bomb bay door, the Texan pilot, Major Kong (Slim Pickins) rides the bomb down, bronco-like, to its target. In the final scene, the president takes solace in Dr. Strangelove's plan to reconstitute the nation after a century of survival in mineshafts … assuming the Soviets haven't already opened up a “mineshaft gap.” The closing credits feature nuclear detonations to the background of Vera Lynn's wartime song “We'll Meet Again.”

Dr. Strangelove was and remains one of the most important and effective films on nuclear war—not because it took on the subject directly, but because it slyly undermined a slew of beliefs and icons that had been largely accepted by the American public. The importance of military expertise—or the “military mind” as strategist Bernard Brodie put it—in a nuclear environment is minimized by the subversive portrayal of almost every military figure in the film. From Ripper's obsession with bodily fluids to Gen. Buck Turgidson's flippant assurances to the president about launching a nuclear strike—“I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed,”—the film's senior military staff, to a man, are disconnected from reality. The junior military members, represented by the crew members of the B-52, are automatons who unthinkingly follow all directions, comforted by Major Kong's assurances that there will be, “some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with.” Feckless civilian leadership fares no better, most notably during Muffley's plaintive phone call to the womanizing, drunken Soviet premier. (“I'm sorry, too, Dmitri …” Muffley tells the premier, “All right, you're sorrier than I am, but I am sorry as well…. ”) Civilian nuclear strategists, embodied by Dr. Strangelove, are undermined by the main [Page 225]theme of the movie, which belittles their attempts—the fail-safe system, Doomsday Device, and “mineshaft gap”—to rationalize nuclear war.

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