This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas were closed and I had to review something, and now I can't stop until I finish.
(PG) ★★★★★
Director: Stanley Kubrick.
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, Peter Bull, James Earl Jones, Tracy Reed.
 |
| "Ah yes, I remember Mein Fuhrer well... his foppish hair, that cute moustache, his girlish laugh...." |
Stanley Kubrick is not remembered as being a great comedic director. People tend to think about how he transformed genres (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining), pushed social boundaries (A Clockwork Orange, Lolita), and examined war (Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket). They refer to his stunning visuals, thought-provoking subject matter, and meticulous direction.
But Kubrick films often had a sense of humour tucked in there somewhere. Often it was done in a way that made you unsure whether you were supposed to laugh or not - A Clockwork Orange and Lolita are great examples of this, where the subject matter is so confronting and the delivery so absurd you're not sure whether to laugh, cringe, cry or all three at once. As such, Dr Strangelove can lay claim to being Kubrick's only out-and-out comedy.
It's far from conventional though. Aside from the romantic intro music suggesting a sexual connection between two refueling jets, it takes about 10 minutes before you're even sure you're watching a comedy. Much like the plot's creeping tension as a rogue American bomber closes in on its Russian target, the humour sneaks up on you, which is a pretty Kubrickian way to do a comedy.
It's also very Kubrickian to take a non-comedic book as the inspiration for a comedic film. Ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter George's Red Alert is a disturbing 'what if?' that explored the Cold War nightmare of nuclear annihilation, and George and Kubrick's initial drafts for Dr Strangelove mirrored the book's clinical tone. But as noted in the International Dictionary Of Films and Film-makers (Volume One), Kubrick realised as they were writing that "in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question".
As he told author Terry Southern, "nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic to be treated in any conventional manner".
"He could only see it now as 'some kind of hideous joke'," wrote Southern in his excellent gonzo essay Notes From The War Room.
It's hard to fathom some fifty-odd years later just how bold of a move it was for Kubrick to turn such serious subject matter into a comedy. The Cuban Missile Crisis happened in October 1962, and two months later Kubrick brought in Southern to help give the script some laughs. The world had edged perilously close to mutually assured destruction, and Kubrick basically said "fuck it" and began mining that very edge for LOLs.
(The first minute or so of this trailer is outstanding:)
If Southern's arrival ensured Dr Strangelove would definitely be a comedy, it was the casting of Peter Sellers that ensured it would be one of the greatest of all time.
"During shooting many substantial changes were made in the script, sometimes together with the cast during improvisations," Kubrick said. "Some of the best dialogue was created by Peter Sellers himself."
Sellers has three roles, and it would have been four if not for a sprained ankle. Southern explained that Columbia Pictures thought the only reason Kubrick's Lolita had been a success "resulted solely from the gimmick of Peter Sellers playing several roles".
"I was amazed that (Kubrick) handled it as well as he did," Southern wrote.
"'I have come to realize,' (Kubrick) explained, 'that such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business.' And it was in this spirit that he accepted the studio's condition that this film, as yet untitled, 'would star Peter Sellers in at least four major roles'."
The fourth role was as Major Kong, the bomber pilot who famously rides a nuke into oblivion in one of the film's most iconic scenes.
"Peter Sellers had mastered the tricky Texas twang without untoward incident, and then had completed the first day's shooting of Major Kong's lines in admirable fashion," Southern wrote. "Kubrick was delighted."
That night, Sellers slipped getting out of a car in front of an Indian restaurant in King's Road. The rigours of Kong's role would prove too much - notably moving up and down the ladders in the bomber - and Kubrick allowed Sellers to stick to just three roles, bringing in real-life cowboy Slim Pickens as a last-minute replacement to play Kong.
It is Sellers' characters - the hapless Group Captain Mandrake, the doomed but well-meaning President Merkin Muffley, and the Nazi-turned-US scientist Dr Strangelove - that get most of the best lines and help make the film the memorable masterpiece it is. Muffley's phone call with the Russian president that spends as much time dealing with social graces as it does nuclear annihilation is outstanding, as is his all-time-great line, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the War Room!". Strangelove himself is perhaps the best remembered character, despite only being in two scenes.
Equally impressive, though often overlooked, is George C Scott. People tend to remember him for his serious Oscar-nominated roles in Anatomy Of A Murder, The Hustler and Patton, or his latter darker turns in Hardcore or The Exorcist III, but Scott regularly did comedy, including They Might Be Giants and Not With My Wife, You Don't!. But his turn here as General Buck Turgidson is one for the ages. Along with the deeply troubled General Jack D Ripper (Hayden), he personifies the broken masculinity being satirised by the film.
Turgidson is the war-hungry, sex-mad military man who wishes America had its own Doomsday device, who sees a sexy upside to Armageddon, and who thinks the film's inciting incident is actually an opportunity. Scott delivers all this with gum-chewing glee and gumption, giving the US war room (beautifully realised in German expressionist malevolence by designer Ken Adam) the rogue "cowboy" that it needs to create conflict.
The other two cowboys are Ripper and Major Kong (Pickens). There's a myth that Pickens had never acted in a film before, as perpetuated in this article, when in fact he was very experienced, although it appears to be true that Pickens didn't know he was in a comedy. His cowboy hat and famous scene riding the nuke (which looks terrible, as does all the rear-projected flying sequences in the film) are rightfully iconic and hilarious.
But it's Ripper who is the most fascinating character circa 2021. His conspiracy theories and bizarre ideas about his bodily fluids were written as hilarious absurdism for Dr Strangelove but have been adopted in some form or another by ensuing waves of nutjobs ever since, unaware of how hilariously absurd they are. One of the greatest, most relevant themes of the film is that the stupidity of the few can doom the many, and that theme is as true now as it was then.
Three of the other big themes that would dot Kubrick's career are also here in fledgling and comedic form - humanity vs technology (see also 2001: A Space Odyssey and AI: Artificial Intelligence), the dehumanisation of war (see also Paths Of Glory and Full Metal Jacket), and the curse of toxic masculinity (Barry Lyndon and A Clockwork Orange).
Kubrick's visuals, though more restrained, are also present. The look of the war room, the deep crisp focus in Ripper's office, the long takes, the documentary-style approach to the air base attack - these directorial flourishes are seeds that perhaps bloom more prominently in other films, but help make Dr Strangelove visually impressive in places, distracting from the shitty rear-projection flying sequences.
The film has its detractors. The usually spot-on Incredible Suit doesn't rate it (but at least acknowledges everyone else does), while Leslie Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (sixth edition) calls it "cinematically and dramatically somewhat tortuous and even dull". But for mine, few satires are stranger or sharper, and there are certainly few funnier films that come from a weirder and braver starting point than Dr Strangelove.
No comments:
Post a Comment