Dr. Strangelove

1963

Paranoid and depressed, the American Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) sends his nuclear aircraft to bomb the USSR. While the British Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) tries to get him to confess the secret code that would allow for calling back the B-52s, an emergency meeting is called at the Pentagon. The sole possibility for avoiding a conflict between the two superpowers boils down to providing the Soviets with the planes' positions so that they can be destroyed. Some of the B-52s are shot down, the others called back except for one whose communication system is not functioning. The president of the United States (Peter Sellers) then asks for the advice of Doctor Strangelove (Peter Sellers), a former Nazi in charge of arms research.

"Dr. Strangelove was born of my great desire to do something on the nuclear nightmare" (1), explained Kubrick, and chose Red Alert, a novel by Peter George. Nonetheless, the script (also co-written with Terry Southern) moves away from the dramatic vein of the original to treat the topic of nuclear war and the cold war in the tone of satiric comedy. It also distances itself from Fail-Safe, which Sidney Lumet made at the same time and which deals with a similar subject but as drama.

The film was released in France on 24 April 1964 to good reviews, unlike in the United States where, on its release (19 January 1964), a senior political journalist for a Washington paper, quoted in the Life magazine review, wrote: "No Communist could dream of a more effective anti-American film [...] than this one". At the Pentagon, generals even felt that the film should be banned. Despite everything, Dr. Strangelove was a great public success.