Counter-Currents
2,454 words
Unlike many moviegoers, I was never that enthusiastic about Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s response to the arms race. I remember that back in the 1980s, a girlfriend and I saw the film and she thought it made light of a serious issue. This was at the height of President Reagan’s sending more missiles to Europe, his Star Wars missile defense plan, and everyone’s lugubrious viewing of The Day After.
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I haven’t seen that film in many, many years. I remember enjoying it immensely. Thanks for reminding of it. I will watch it again soon.
James B. Harris had been a producer for Stanley Kubrick, but they fell out over Dr. Strangelove. Harris had wanted it to be a serious thriller, but Kubrick wanted a comic farce, so Harris went his own way and made another classic nuclear-confrontation film, The Bedford Incident (1965).
On the Beach (1959) still packs a punch, though I’m amused by the contemporary, dismissive review in Variety: “The spectator is left with the sick feeling that he’s had a preview of Armageddon, in which all contestants lost.” Wasn’t that the point?
Henry Fonda had such a comforting presence.
I am on the Dr. Strangelove side of the 58-year-old controversy about these two films, as I believe it to be better-made and also because the idea, first, that the American President would ever order a nuclear strike on a US city, and second, that murdering millions of innocent people in New York would somehow balance the scales of justice after an accidental attack on Moscow are both unrealistic (in its own way it’s even more satirical than Strangelove but doesn’t seem to realize it) and morally dubious. Nevertheless, Fail-Safe is still a very interesting film in my view and worth watching. Professor Groeteschele is certainly a more realistic depiction of a Cold War-era nuclear strategist than Strangelove (who is clearly a caricature), and it’s interesting that the film briefly touches on how Groeteschele’s Jewish ethnicity may be influencing his attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is certainly the case that many of the men who developed America’s nuclear doctrines in the early years of the Cold War were Jewish.
It’s worth mentioning that “Fail-Safe” was remade in 2000 in the form of a live television broadcast on CBS, the first time they had aired a dramatic production live since 1960 and possibly the last time a major US network ever did so. George Clooney plays Grady and Richard Dreyfuss plays the President in it. It’s available on video and is also worth watching, even though it follows the original very closely apart from eliminating some of the subplots.
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