Stanley Kubrick's "Doctor Strangelove" (1963)

It is hard to imagine anything less funny than nuclear war.  However Stanley Kubrick made a film that was definitely a comedy, a satire, and could be used in the dictionary definition of "black comedy".    This is perhaps the third time I've seen the film and it is quite simply a classic.   The full title of the film is "Doctor Strangelove:  or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".    The opening credits by themselves give you a sense of what is coming, with a film of a long range bomber being refueled in flight.  One does not need a very active imagination to know what that looks like. 

Of course it is rather dated now, in the sense that we no longer use bombers.   Things have progressed and not in a good way. There are more nations with nuclear weapons (euphemistically referred to as "Weapons of Mass Destruction") and with nuclear proliferation spreading to become within the grasp of states like Islamist Iran and North Korea.    However the early sixties were a very anxious time during the cold war, with the aggressive moves of Khrushchev in Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Chinese, who had or would shortly begin slaughtering in a very cold blooded if low tech way millions of their own people and who got their own bomb in 1964. 

General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden)

The film opens with an air force general who has lost his mind. General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) decides on his own initiative to launch an all out nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.    He seals off the base and confiscates all radios from base.  Meanwhile Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, an RAF officer (Peter Sellers in the first of 3 roles) discovers too late what is going on. While Ripper goes on and on about the Commies and their weakening of our "precious bodily fluids,"

Captain Mandrake and General Ripper

Captain Mandrake tries desperately to get the recall code from him, as the soldiers in the base fight the ones assaulting the base, and General Ripper gets out a machine gun and fires out the window of his office.  

Cut to the "War Room" somewhere in Washington.  The President and his many advisors, cabinet members,  sit at an enormous round table with a lighted map of the Soviet Union on one wall and North America on the other.  General
"Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott) explains to the President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers again, this time looking like Adlai Stevenson) about how something so horrible could have happened.  Turgidson is earnest and a bit naive himself, alas. 

President Muffley and General Turgidson

He explains how nuclear war could be won with "acceptable civilian casualties" of about 20 million dead.    He is obviously almost as loony as General Ripper.  They invite the Soviet ambassador into the war room and put him on the phone to the Premier.  Turgidson is scandalized by this, as if at this point it matters whether the ambassador sees the "war room" or not.  

Major "King" Kong (Slim Pickens)

Cut to a nuclear bomber flying somewhere in the Arctic.  Major "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) is reading Playboy in the cockpit when they get a coded message which to their astonishment is the one indicating they should attack their targets in Russia.  After a moment of shock and disbelief, Pickens gets his cowboy hat out of a safe along with the attack instructions and solemnly tells the crew they must do their duty.  

Meanwhile things are going from bad to worse for Captain Mandrake who is trapped in the office with General Ripper while a violent military assault is being made on the base.  Mandrake is doing his best to coax the recall codes from Ripper but has no luck.  Finally Ripper, who is afraid that he might crack under torture, shoots himself, and when shortly afterwards Colonel "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn) shows up he is taken prisoner and is only with difficulty persuaded that it is important for Mandrake to put in a call to the President.  In a wonderfully comic exchange, Col. Guano takes him to a pay phone, but Mandrake finds he doesn't have enough change to make the call.  He asks Guano to shoot the coke machine and get some coins for him.  Guano objects "But that's private property!" and when Mandrake prevails on him, Guano

Colonel "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn)

says, "Well I hope you realize you will have the Coca Cola Company to answer to."

Returning to the war room, with the help of the President, the planes are recalled and three of the four remaining bombers are shot down.  The ambassador reveals that the Soviets have created what they call "The Doomsday machine" which is triggered automatically if any target in the Soviet Union is attacked.   As a result every living thing on the surface of the Earth will be killed by radiation.   The President asks not unreasonably, "Well, what good is it unless you tell us about it?" And the ambassador replies.  "Oh the Premier was going to announce it at the next party congress.  You know how the Premier likes surprises."

Doctor Strangelove (Sellers)

At this point Doctor Strangelove (Peter Sellers again), who is confined to a wheelchair and has a right arm which he only with difficulty can control.  Strangelove is one of those German scientists which America and the Soviet Union divided up after the Second World War.   As it becomes clear that the doomsday machine might be triggered and make life on the Earth's surface uninhabitable for about 100 years, talk between Turgidson and Strangelove devolve into a discussion of survival of a select population of people deep in mine shafts.  And so it goes, ad absurdum.   Meanwhile the Soviet ambassador sneaks off with a tiny camera taking pictures of the war room.

Slim Pickens drops the big one

The film closes with stock silent footage of nuclear explosions while Vera Ellen sings "We'll meet again."  It is a great, if unsettling film, all the more so in view of the backdrop of real world events in 1962 and 1963.