Among the greatest issues plaguing the public consciousness in the 60s was the ever imminent threat of nuclear destruction amid the Cold War. In 1964, two films with almost completely identical plots but very distinctive approaches. Where Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe follows the attempted prevention of an unauthorized nuclear attack on Russia with complete seriousness and drama, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb employs farce. Yet both films, in their presentation of US bureaucracy in the face of the potential tragedy of nuclear war, articulate the absurdity of the Cold War itself, the fallibility of our leaders and the safeguards they put in place, and the frightening militarism and jingoism that made tensions so high in the first place.
While the two films are imminently similar, from general narrative beats to analogous characters. However, an examination of their differences in presentation and tone are revealing in the perspective from which these films are coming from. Both films have an early scene in which one of the central characters, a general, leaves his home to go to work. Fail Safe follows its opening nightmare sequence with an intimate domestic scene in a cramped New York apartment. General Black checks on his children, and relays his fears to his wife before heading to the Pentagon. In Dr. Strangelove, the audience is shown a completely different scene. The single room shown in General ‘Buck’ Turgidson’s home is perhaps larger than General Black’s entire apartment. The room has mirrors running across a whole wall to showcase just how much space there is, with plenty of lavish drink bottles and glasses in addition to high end sound systems. Instead of a humble family, Turgidson cohabitates with Miss Scott, a literal Playboy model, whom he has to yell across the room to talk to from the bathroom. Turgidson is called in because the crisis of the film has already been set in motion, yet unlike Black who is haunted by a premonitory nightmare, he seems wholly unconcerned. This distinction in domesticity underscores how the two films want the audience to view the characters. While both films are condemnatory of the people in power who brought about the heightened tensions of the Cold War, Fail Safe asks the audience to empathize with these people, whereas Dr. Strangelove seeks just the opposite, and actively distances the players from the common person, the cast being mostly caricatures. In Fail Safe the voices of others can be heard over the phone, allowing the audience to hear the Russian prime minister and empathize with them just as they would with the President, whereas phone calls are always one-sided in Dr. Strangelove, often making the person on the other line seem even more a fool than the one on screen. In the introduction for their BFI Film Classics book on Dr. Strangelove, Peter Krämer quotes Kubrick as being “‘…against everybody. The Joint Chiefs and the nitwit liberals and the sit-downers’” (Kubrick qtd. in Krämer 12). Contrary to Fail Safe, in which the Pentagon war room is small and intimate, crowding all the advisors around a small table looking at a screen, Dr. Strangelove’s war room is massive and modern to an alienating degree, the camera often cutting to a wide angle that dwarfs the President and his advisors, iterating an insignificance (and incompetence) in the face of the massive boards spelling impending doom.
The exception to the general empathy afforded to the cast of Fail Safe lies with Dr. Groeteschele, who one might consider the film’s primary antagonist if it had one. The audience is introduced to Groeteschele at a ritzy dinner party, calling 60 million deaths an acceptable loss in the name of victory. In his hypocrisy he slaps Ilsa Wolfe, a woman enamored by the twisted absolutism of his rhetoric, stating “I’m not like your kind,” only to be the first of all of the President’s advisors to call for a full scale strike against Russia, knowing that there would be little to no survivors whatsoever in the event of nuclear war (Lumet). Likewise General Turgidson is the first to suggest a first strike, citing “modest and acceptable civilian casualties…” (Kubrick). Throughout Fail Safe, Lumet uses close-ups and extreme close-ups to heighten the tension as well as the impact of important dialogue. In Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick saves the close-ups for the madmen of the film. When the camera is on General Ripper in a low angle close-up, it signals to the audience that he is in control, has the power, and his dialogue signifies that he is completely out of his mind, spouting conspiracies about the Soviets contaminating the body fluids of Americans. And yet he seems to know as much about communism as Dr. Groeteschele.
Turgidson, Ripper, and Groeteschele exemplify the jingoism and blind faith in failed government systems that lie at the heart of Cold War politics, insistent that communism is the enemy and that it must be destroyed at all costs, even if it means America is all but destroyed in the process. At even the slightest probing it becomes clear that safeguards put in place to prevent mistakes are almost designed to generate catastrophe (note the irony of the fail safes failing). Yet Turgidson insists that everyone defer to the “big board,” and that it’s “…[un]fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip up…” (Kubrick). Even though it means mass destruction across the globe, Turgidson delights in the high probability the bombers will reach their targets, beaming with pride as he spells ultimate doom. In his arrogance, Groeteschelehe is convinced the Soviets will surrender for fear of a doomsday device striking in retaliation. As Dr. Strangelove explains the horrific destructive power of a doomsday device, Turgidson can only think how nice it would be for the US to have one of their own.
In Fail Safe, the distrust and jingoism against the Soviets is shown as a product of fear and the “us vs. them” mentality, as with characters like Colonel Cascio or Grady, whose terrified actions are revealing of the caustic nature of hyper nationalism that morphs into jingoism. The primary conflict of Fail Safe arises as a result not only of humanity allowing technology to advance beyond their means for the sake of ensuring victory in battle, but the systems put in place around this technology and the rhetoric instilled in the people responsible for managing it. In Dr. Strangelove, the blame lies solely on the actions of men, driven by that very same rhetoric. Shared between both films is a character proclaiming that decisive action must be taken by soldiers, not politicians, but in Dr. Strangelove that soldier takes that action. Whether it’s Ripper convinced the Communists have poisoned American body fluids or Groeteschele prepared to face annihilation just to say America won, these men are not acting in the interests of the American public, to the point where they are indifferent to the greater consequences of their words and actions as a whole.
It is this indifference that fully distinguishes Dr. Strangelove from Fail Safe on a tonal level. Where Fail Safe carries an intensity throughout, the severity of the situation written all over the faces of its characters shown in close-up, the proverbial atmosphere of Dr. Strangelove feels as though the characters do not fully understand or acknowledge the threat they are facing. The humor and irony of the film often neutralize the tension that would be there in Fail Safe. The theme song for the bombing run serves to heighten the absurdity of the entire affair, even during the most intense scenes. Group Captain Mandrake’s terror is mostly played up for laughs, Ripper acting as a comedic foil. The President declares “I will not go down in history as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler,” whilst having a nazi advisor in the very same room. Though both Turgidson and Groeteschele’s plans are rejected outright, Turgidson remains prevalent throughout the film, constantly commenting on the events as they transpire. By the end of Fail Safe, the President is harrowed, willing to sacrifice New York for the sake of preventing nuclear war. In his final conversation with the prime minister, the President talks of their responsibility and accountability: “What do we say to the dead?!” to which the prime minister responds: “I think, if we are men, we must say that this will not happen again” (Lumet), suggesting that in the wake of this tragedy the Cold War will come to an end. The President in Dr. Strangelove, on the other hand, is advised by Strangelove for a plan to move America underground into mines, employing a fascist and eugenics system of selecting who stays and goes based on metrics of intelligence, able bodiedness, etc, all whilst Dr. Strangelove calls the President “mein Führer” and does the nazi salute. With this Turgidson reclaims his foothold in the conversation as he and the other advisors slip right back into the “us vs them” competitive mindset that caused the end of the world in the first place: “Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!” (Kubrick).
Strangelove’s approximations of the national temperament going underground, that of “nostalgia… combined with the spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!” (Kubrick) reflects the flaccidity of the attempts by governments to ease the public with the promise of nuclear survival. Discussing the threat of nuclear war in the public conscience of Britain in their piece “Images of Survival, Stories of Destruction: Nuclear War on British Screens from 1945 to the Early 1960s,” Matthew Grant writes: “But whereas the imagery and lived experience of the Second World War served to contain ideas of atomic destruction and promote ideas of post-attack survival, it could not undertake the same symbolic work in the thermonuclear age. The image of the city-destroying, perhaps nation-destroying, bomb was an imaginative as well as a technological step-change. People had struggled to imagine atomic destruction in the context of an inhabitable city; when conceptualising the hydrogen bomb, however, this city was replaced by an absence” (Grant 24).
As Grant elaborates with various poll results from the time, the public did not believe such promises of Nuclear survival (Grant 20), and what concerned Stanley Kubrick was that they accepted it. Kubrick described the public as “walking dead,” being resigned to the possibility of complete annihilation and choosing to avoid thinking about it (Krämer 10). This is what the or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb is iterating, and why there is a general atmosphere of indifference/resignation throughout the film. As Krämer puts it: “…he wanted them to relax (‘stop worrying’), get involved in the action and become complicit in its terrible outcome (‘lov[ing] the bomb’)… Paying particular attention to male fantasy, the film challenges members of the audience to become – or to resist becoming – the ‘I’ in the title and learn – or resist learning – to love the bomb” (Krämer 13).
When discussing war cinema, there is often the conversation of how much a film should be aestheticized or dramatized. In an interview with Alexander Schwarz about his film Lessons of Darkness, Werner Herzog muses: “The question is always, how much stylization does the truth need? That is the big question that has always moved me…” (Herzog qtd. in Schwarz 111). Both Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe portray a heightened reality, the latter through intense drama and the former through absurdist comedy. The films also ground themselves by employing realism to the details of their plots. In notes for the script, Kubrick wrote that “‘The story will be played for realistic comedy – which means the essentially truthful moods and attitudes will be portrayed accurately, with an occasionally bizarre or super-realistic crescendo…’” (Kubrick qtd. in Krämer 13). It’s through these heightened versions of reality that the two films are able to express their ideas, creating unreal scenarios that, as discussed throughout this essay, are reflections of or revealing of the temperaments and attitudes prevalent in the Cold War. As Herzog iterates about the making of : “We understood that there is a deeper layer of truth, which under certain circumstances can only be reached by saying what is factually untrue or by doing something incorrect… We have to rid ourselves of this unsatisfying and inadequate cinéma vérité, because it can only represent a superficial layer of truth, of visible truth in film. The cinema however can register very different, much deeper layers of truth, and that’s what we have to work on” (Herzog qtd. in Schwarz 111, 114).
Throughout the Cold War, the fear of nuclear war was intertwined with the “Red Scare.” Communism was the enemy to the supposed American way, as echoed by Groeteschele and Turgidson, and that rhetoric is what spurs the terrified irrationality of men like Colonel Cascio and Grady. Yet both films have moments specifically critiquing Capitalism and the manner in which the United States gives it precedence over human life. As with many of the scenes previously noted, the two films have wildly different approaches, but with a similar sentiment. With the knowledge that the bomber is likely to reach Moscow and that New York will be destroyed afterward, Dr. Groeteschele makes his case one last time, detailing the necessity for the government to retrieve the records of the United States’ largest corporations from the remains of New York. The film cuts back and forth from Groeteschele and the harrowed pentagon advisors, and he almost seems to realize the repugnance of what he just said, calling the “excavation” of the dead a wasted effort and using the word “rescue” in regards to the corporate records. He stops himself and returns to his seat, repeating the phrase “Our economy depends on this” before finally quoting the bible: “And the Lord said gentlemen; he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone” (Lumet). In Dr. Strangelove, Mandrake attempts to reach the Pentagon so he may relay the recall code so the bombing squad can be stopped, but the operator won’t allow him to make the collect call because he is short on change. He instructs Colonel ‘Bat’ Guano to shoot the nearby Coca-Cola machine so he can make the difference in change, to which Guano replies: “That’s private property.” Mandrake insists and Guano relents, with the caveat that “…if you don’t get the President of the United States on the phone you know what’s gonna happen to you? You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company” (Kubrick). Under capitalism, money is god, wealth is sacred, and private property lies above human life, even in the face of the end of the world.
The final scenes of both Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove depicts nuclear devastation in uniquely haunting ways. After hearing the near deafening screech of the ambassador’s phone melting as Moscow is destroyed, the President in Fail Safe orders the bombing of New York. As General Black counts down from ten, small snapshots of people living their lives are shown in tandem. As he drops the bombs Black commits suicide, and in his final moments remembers his nightmare from the start of the film. He was the matador. There is a brief pause, then freeze frames of the previous snapshots are sharply zoomed into whilst quickly cutting between them before the screen is whited out for an instant before cutting to black. The sounds of bullfighting play over the credits, gradually turning into the sounds of a plane and finally the shriek of the melting phone, which was the sound that permeated General Black’s nightmare at the start of the film. The final scene of Dr. Strangelove is a montage of nuclear/hydrogen bombs going off, set to the tune of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again,” an ironic ballad for the end of the world that implies a reunion either between the few who survive or the living joining the dead. In a 1996 interview with Geoffrey O’Brien, Werner Herzog used this sequence as an example of beauty and horror existing simultaneously: “…Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove, for example, with its beautifully blossoming atomic explosions at the end, is the most painful film I’ve ever seen” (Herzog qtd. in O’Brien 132). These endings leave one emotionally devastated, and while Fail Safe lingers in the conscience because of how horrific it is in the moment, the impact of Dr. Strangelove’s finale arrives shortly after, as one is left to process the cheery vision of global devastation.
Both Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb feature a disclaimer that the stated position of the US Airforce and Department of Defense is that their safeguards would prevent the events of the films from occurring. Fail Safe puts its disclaimer at the end of the credits, as though acting as both a hollow reassurance and an urging of the audience to be wary of those in power and the systems they rely on. The disclaimer for Dr. Strangelove is the first thing shown, and it feels like one big setup for the comedy that will ensue. The placement of these disclaimers showcase, in microcosm the distinct manners in which these two films portray the Cold War. To Fail Safe, the failure of our leaders, the jingoism, the rhetoric that feeds off of fear, and the threat of complete and total annihilation is a nightmare. To Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, it’s a sick joke.
“And we all know we’re going to die, but you make a game out of it, a marvelous game that includes the whole world… you make death an entertainment, something that can be played in a living room.”
–Fail Safe (1964), dir. Sidney Lumet
Works Cited
Grant, Matthew. “Images of Survival, Stories of Destruction: Nuclear War on British Screens from 1945 to the Early 1960s.” Journal of British Cinema and Television, vol. 10, no. 1, 2013, pp. 7–26., doi:10.3366/jbctv.2013.0119.
Krämer, Peter. “Introduction.” Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, British Film Institute, 2014, pp. 7–16.
Kubrick, Stanley, director. Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Hawk Films/Columbia Pictures, 1964.
Lumet, Sidney, director. Fail Safe. Columbia Pictures, 1964.
O’Brien, Geoffrey. “Werner Herzog in Conversation with Geoffrey O’Brien.” Werner Herzog: Interviews, edited by Eric Ames, by Werner Herzog, University Press of Mississippi, 2014, pp. 131–132.
Schwarz, Alexander. “Interview with Werner Herzog on Lessons of Darkness.” Werner Herzog: Interviews, edited by Eric Ames, by Werner Herzog, University Press of Mississippi, 2014, pp. 109–114.