I watched this movie for the first time over the holidays. Am I the only one who thinks that it wasn’t that good? Maybe it’s because of the 30+ years of hype for the film, but besides from a couple decent chuckle lines – not that funny or really that insightful. Unlike a lot of older movies, I don’t think it particularly stands up.
For real Soviet era humor I recommend Rocky IV. Which I re-watched.
“I will BREAK you”.
Wasn’t that good? Are you nuts?
Watch it again, Oliver.
Yes, not that good.
Why? Cite your complaints.
I mean especially if you’re going to suggest Rocky IV in its place …
Holy Shit, Oliver, you are sadly mistaken. Watch it again. Seriously.
“Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be a human being unless you had some pretty strong feelings about nuclear conflict.”
“General Turgidson, I was under the impression that I was the only person with the authority to order a nuclear strike.”
“Uh, yes sir, that is true. And uh, although I hate to say before all the facts are in, it appears General Ripper has exceeded his authority.”
That’s off the top of my head. I could go on and on. Kubrick is cold and clinical and it can take a little watching to get into him, but for God’s sake, man, put down the DC comics and give it another chance.
When I first watched it years ago it was all about Peter Sellers but after a view more viewings you realize that George C. Scott is a fracking genius …
“I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed, but 20-30 million dead, tops. Depending on the breaks.”
It has a few good lines, but a few good lines does not a movie make. I’m being sarcastic with the Rocky thing, mostly because Rocky is so bad it’s good. I just found Strangelove to be kind of plodding and blindingly obvious. Granted, it was probably a mind-blower when it was originally released but especially after watching a bunch of Twilight Zones from the same era yesterday I see how off the mark the movie is in making its point.
It has a tad bit more than a few good lines.
And off the mark? Off the mark? Okay, first tell me what you think it’s mark was.
Strangelove is dated. It’s not going to resonate with younger folks who didn’t grow up during the Cuban missile crisis. Sellers’ humor is dry and doesn’t reach a lot of Yanks either. I love the movie myself.
“Strangelove is dated.”
I don’t know how you can say that. Yes the Cold War is over but it isn’t just a satire of Cold War politics. It’s a satire of rational systems in general, a recurring theme in Kurbick’s work.
Witness even the toilet humor in 2001 when Dr. Floyd is confronted by the long list of instructions on how to operate a zero gravity bathroom — in the middle of his space ballet sequence.
And really, Oliver, I don’t care if you liked it or not, movie love is a highly subjective thing, but to dismiss what is an American masterpiece so casually just struck me as a tad dissapointing.
Aw, give him a rest. I hated Fargo, I thought Casablanca was overrated, I thought the ending to the Shawshank Redemption blew chunks. Nobody likes everything, not even the so-called “classics.”
I can actually remember going to see Rocky IV. I still giggle whenever I hear those frigging Survivor songs … man, what a crappy soundtrack.
Fargo, I get. Casablanca, yes it is — except as an almost perfect example of classical Hollywood narrative style.
Dr. Strangelove is “plodding and blindingly obvious.” Uh uh. No way. To the ships …
I guess the main theme that the military-industrial complex and politicians are really silly and bizarre just doesn’t strike me as original, even in 1968. Just because everyone hails something as a classic doesn’t mean it is to the individual. I thought Napoleon Dynamite was quite unfunny, whereas the rest of the world blew their milk through their noses over it. There are movies I think were great (October Sky) that the rest of the world snoozed over. But just because something is The Greatest Ever Because Critics Agree is no reason for someone to like a movie.
Maybe if it had had a montage set to Survivor songs it would have been better.
(For the record, I’ve never been able to get through 2001, Chinatown is decent but not great, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is awesome, as is Citizen Kane which is super kick-ass. I also have never seen Jaws or Top Gun.)
Blasphemer! Dr. Strangelove is absolutely brilliant. Amazing performance from Peter Sellers, biting commentary on Cold War politics, can’t miss.
Fargo and Casablanca also are amazing. Stellar acting and screenwriting.
Although Rocky IV is very entertaining, as well.
Context. Without the context of the Cold War looking over your shoulder (nuclear Armageddon anyone) the notion of our country being run by idiots and madmen loses it’s skin-crawling dread (and hence, chuckles).
Strangelove came out in 1964.
That said, I am no canonista but Paul Schrader’s recent Film Comment
essay on the need for a new film canon is interesting, even if it exhibits many of the reasons why such things are so stifling in the first place.
He also gives a great list of much watch films at the end (unfirtunately, only it seems in the print issue but here’s the readers
responses). You may hate every single of one them but you have to have seen all or most of them if you want anyone to take you seriously in a serious discussion about film.
The deep focus compositions of Strangelove would have been impossible without Kane but without Strangelove you can forget Altman’s MASH.
“Without the context of the Cold War looking over your shoulder (nuclear Armageddon anyone) the notion of our country being run by idiots and madmen loses it’s skin-crawling dread (and hence, chuckles).”
Is this satire in its own right? I mean this is the era of Bush-Cheney, afterall?
You find it difficult now to imagine the country being run by idiots and madmen?
Even I knew in 1964, and I was only 18, that the country was run by people smarter and saner than the characters portrayed in Strangelove.
The problem with the United States today is that there are grown ups now who don’t realize that the people who run this country and its military today are smarter and saner than the characters portrayed by Sellers and Scott.
That’s why it was funny then, and might as well be a Kazakhstanian documentary now.
Oh, wait…
Hey, it’s “I must break you.”
Frankly, I’ve always thought Kubrick was a tad overrated. Fans slobber over every film the man has made and if you don’t like one it simply means you don’t “get it” (see ‘A Clockwork Orange’, ‘The Shining’ and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’).
That being said, ‘Dr. Strangelove’ is an excellent film. People often confuse satire with humor, though that is often not the case. ‘The Lord of The Flies’ for instance, is satire, but is not funny. The humor in Dr. Strangelove is often subtle, but it is hilarious. “He’ll see the big board!” And how does anybody not laugh at, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!!”
Oliver, your expectations may have been too high. I would suggest watching it again.
And you’ve never seen Jaws? You’re a heathen.
I never saw Strangelove, so I can’t comment. I will, however, second Oliver’s implication that the original Twilight Zone show was simply all kinds of brilliant.
My husband and I just saw the movie again on my birthday of all things (played on TCM). I always love the image of Slim Pickens riding the bomb down — my husband said he was the most capable man in the movie and I was caught between NOT wanting Armageddon and the idea that this bomber crew (it included Dennis Hopper AND James Earl Jones for gosh sakes) was so COMPETENT that they deserved to get thru.
And Johnny Comes Marching Home Again was awesome for the music.
At the very very end, the image of “fighting in the War Room” was just awesome. Still fighting while it was all ending.
I think the script and the acting were better than the direction which was very flat but maybe Kubrick for once wanted to be “non-show- offy.” It’s a film I would stay up to watch.
Rocky IV lauched Dolph Lundgrn on an unsuspecting world. iiiii.
Can’t beat Red Dawn. Grumpy Cuban troops occupying a Wyoming town.
Doctor Strangelove is probably my favorite movie.
General Jack D. Ripper: No, I mean when they tortured you did you talk?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Ah, oh, no… well, I don’t think they wanted me to talk really. I don’t think they wanted me to say anything. It was just their way of having a bit of fun, the swines. Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.
Apparently Kubrick was going to do a drama about nuclear annihilation–when the absurdity of it all became apparent to him.
Oh, and it was James Earl Jones’ first film.
frameone: heh-heh – gotcha.
Proving that every rule has an exception, I must agree with Jay and the rest on this one instead of Ollie: Strangelove is frackin’ brilliant. And not entirely for the obvious reasons.
I am told (now this could be an urban myth, I’ll grant) that Kubrick inquired of the military for a view of the actual war room so he could construct a set with maximum verisimilitude. He was, of course, told to fuck just miles of off. So he constructed a set as he imagined it would be, and was later accosted by the gov’t demanding to know who had leaked the photos to him.
There was an outstanding documentary on Kubrick I caught on cable a while ago after his death, and it mentioned many other facts I didn’t know which impressed me even more. Like Orson Wells, Kubrick was a perfectionist. In his film “Barry Lyndon” he went to all sorts of lengths and expense to build special cameras with huge aperture lenses, so that the many scenes taking place in candlelit 18th century salons could actually all be filmed in candlelight ONLY! The cinematography on that film was amazing, even if the story and original novel was rather depressing. Not to mention the many innovations he and A.C. Clarke came up with for the 0-G environment in 2001, etc.
“(For the record, I’ve never been able to get through 2001, Chinatown is decent but not great, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is awesome, as is Citizen Kane which is super kick-ass. I also have never seen Jaws or Top Gun.)”
For a second there I thought that Hugh Hewitt had hacked into your webpage.
Ah well, as they say, there is no disputing tastes.
I will however note that the Musical version of the Producers is a crime against humanity in comparison to the original.
I think there’s also the issue of comedic sensibility. I haven’t watched enough of his movies to definitively say, but I think I don’t find Sellers funny enough. I’ll also admit that when it comes to classic film I’m more a fan of noir than political stuff. There’s a school of thought that says noir/crime fiction talks a good deal about the “real” world. (ie Double Indemnity, the original DOA, and just about anything with a flatfoot gumshoe talking to a dame with gams from here to eternity and back)
For me, Strangelove had a point but it hammered away at it with a giant mallet versus a more subtle approach that I believe would have done a better job. I liked the George C. Scott mugging, but that’s about it.
I haven’t consciously not seen Jaws, I just haven’t got around to it yet.
Everyone jumps to the conclusion that I’m a dumb movie aficionado because of my relentless love of pop culture, but you’ll find I enjoy as many art house type deals as well as the films the unwashed masses enjoy.
The 0-G environment in 2001 is, when all is said an done, just a blown-out version of the same gag as pioneered by Stanley Donen and Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding.
Among my favorite Strangelove moments is the hotline phonecall between President Merkin Muffly and the head of the Soviet Union. It has something of the flavor of a Bob Newhart phone routine.
Clearly there’s something terribly wrong with you. Maybe the Democrats winning the midterms in a landslide broke your brain.
Nah, upon reflection I can see the reason why Oliver thinks Dr. Strangelove was underwhelming.
He waited to see the film until Bush was the decider, er president.
I mean, how can the tics and grimaces of Peter Sellers compete with Bill Kristol’s performance.
OW’s brilliance is subtle at times. Knowing his audience, he throws out an obviously loaded and controversial statement re a hallowed movie and !Bingo! : 30 plus posts.
How Slim Pickens didn’t win an Oscar for his nuanced, gut wrenching portrayal of Major Kong is beyond me. Of course it is only superseded by his thoughtful and multi-faceted portrayal of the troubled Taggert in Blazing Saddles.
And of course Strangelove (Kissinger?) is dated. But it is more of a movie that defines a point in our history rather than reflecting it. Casablanca is truly ‘dated’ too.
strangelove is one of the best pictures ever made. and with this comment i am erasing the bookmark for this site.
you’re wrong about strangelove, but there’s no accounting for taste. dare a 37-year old accuse a 29-year old of being too young to get it?
jaws you should get around to, not just because it’s a fantastic monster movie that famously hid the monster (necessitated by technical problems which actually improved the final product) but also for its significance in movie history — the first really huge blockbuster that showed the sheer amount of money that could be made by a film. the beginning of the landslide, accelerated by star wars, that led us to the blockbuster-driven/wide opening release pattern/opening weekend-focussed industry we see today. such a great film, with such sad side effects. one of the best films of the 70’s, that at the same time killed off a lot of the small director-driven 70’s filmmaking. you can even say it woke up some of the larger conglomerates to the financial possibilities of owning a movie studio.
also it has robert shaw, and a cool shark.
“Like Orson Wells, Kubrick was a perfectionist.”
Kubrick’s perfectionism is part of what makes his cinema so rich. He goes to such meticulous planning to tell stories about how meticulous planning — The Killing, Strangelove, 2001, Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket — always go horribly, absurdly awry.
fightingdem: Damn!
Kissinger=Strangelove?
Nah, I think he was based on Edward Teller–the creator of the H-Bomb.
My personal shame: I hate the really, really fast-talking comedies of the 30s and 40s (especially those starring Cary Grant, like Bringing up Baby and his Girl Friday), unless it’s the Marx brothers doin’ the fast-talkin’.
But think of the achievement of Dr. Strangelove: a black comedy about nuclear annihilation just a year or two after the Cuban missile crisis! I mean, it’s no Old School or Van Wilder’s Got Himself a Venereal Disease, but it’s close.
It doesn’t matter if Strangelove was right or wrong (we are all here, so it wasn’t 100% right, for sure). It was good movie making and it reflected the mood of the times – rather well. Everyone sneers at the old ‘drop and roll’ movies of the fifties, but having grown up in that time, they weren’t funny to kids or adults at that time – based on what we ‘knew’.
Strangelove reflects the deep cynicism of the time about the cold war, and what we ‘knew’ about the total unsurvivability and likelihood of nuclear war. In reality, our generals knew more and performed better than George or Kubrick imagined.
“Strangelove reflects the deep cynicism of the time about the cold war …”
It’s that but it’s much more than that if you look at in the context of Kubrick’s whole career. To write it off as some dated Cold War-specific satire is to ignore the larger theme of the ultimate absurdity that lies behind all human attempts at rationality.
Replace “Dmitri” with “al-Maliki” and see Murkey Muffley as Dubya and, well… it really writes itself…
“Now, al-Maliki, you know how we’ve always talked about something going wrong with the war… The Iraq War…”
Dugger wrote:
“Strangelove reflects the deep cynicism of the time about the cold war, and what we ‘knew’ about the total unsurvivability and likelihood of nuclear war. In reality, our generals knew more and performed better than George or Kubrick imagined.”
I don’t know if I buy that completely… Especially now that it’s been revealed that Curtis LeMay had been a strong advocate of the General Jack D. Ripper plan all along.
“Now, al-Maliki, you know how we’ve always talked about something going wrong with the war… The Iraq War…”
ROFL.
frame
“ultimate absurdity that lies behind all human attempts at rationality. ‘
Have no idea what that means. We ultimately can’t be rational?? If we are, then, irrational, how do we know we are irrational?
Porco,
Maybe you are joking. The SAC plan back then was to render war impossible by leaving no doubt in the minds of old Stalinists that they would be hit hard if they conducted a sneak attack. Hence ‘fail safe’ etc. Strangelove shows that method (incorrectly – but entertainingly) failing. In reality it worked, worked well. Nuclear war between the superpowers didn’t happen and now will likely never happen. At that time, I believe a credible threat of deterrence, what with the perceived Russian technolocical superiority (Sputnik, Gargarin, mega instead of kilo ton nukes), was a key to preventing the Russians from striking.
Oliver needs to learn to love fabulous movies and stop worrying.
“We ultimately can’t be rational??”
You are the living embodiment of the condition, Dugger.
But perhaps I mispoke. Kubrick returned again and again to the essential absuridity of human rationality.
Think for two seconds about Strangelove and the other Kubrick films I mentioned.
In Strangelove, the characters are all claim to be acting in the rational, indeed, even infallibly rational. They have systems in place, protocols layed out and backup plans forbackup plans for backup plans. Even Gen. Ripper claims an ultimate rationality for his actions.
They all consider themselves hyper rational beings working in hyper rational systems and how does it all end up? They destroy the fucking world.
That same scenario plays out on various levels throughout Kubrick’s films. Ever seen The Killing? The perfect crime, laid out in all its rational precision with even random and chaotic events — the fight at the race track, for instance – all part of the plan or else absorbed into it. And what happens in the end? Well, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasnt seen it.
Look at what happens at the end of the first sequence of Full Metal Jacket?
Kubrick consistently told stories about chaos, chance and the darker sides of human nature undermining every rational attempt to order the universe. He satired the human pretense to reason.
Dugger,
Actually I’m referring to Curtis LeMay’s possible involvement in Project Control and the contention of journalists like Paul Lashmar that LeMay may have been trying to provoke WWIII without the knowledge or permission of President Eisenhower.
I never thought of it as an attempt to show the inherent problems with our faith in rationality before. Has anyone read “Voltaire’s Bastards” by John Ralston Saul. This is precisely the problem he writes about.
Once upon a time, Dr. Strangelove was satire. Characterizations were considered overbroad and exaggerated. It was a parody of the drama Fail-Safe, which starred Henry Fonda.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058083/
In the current time of George Bush however (whose harshest critics never imagined in their worst nightmares he would be as stupendously bad as he has turned out to be) those characters don’t look exaggerated in the least. So the humor of the movie is rather a bit more difficult to appreciate.
When real-life people (say, Richard Perle or Michael Ledeen or Jim O’Beirne, for just a couple examples) actually display the mentality of cartoon characters, like Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, or Snidely Whiplash, the cartoons just lose some of their natural comedic luster by comparison.
Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan were literal incarnations of the fictional advertising character, Joe Isuzu (live actor, but really a cartoon personality). Krauthammer doesn’t suffer a problem with his hand like Strangelove, but otherwise there’s really not very much difference between the two. Bush and his ideological friends are cartoon character embeciles that in years gone by would have been thought ridiculously unrealistic. Alas, when real life imitates comedic art with such horrifying real life-and-death consequences, the humor tends to recede.
The writing in Strangelove – in significant part by Terry Southern – is spectacular, and the film was definitely a landmark in movie history.
The original King Kong might disappoint some viewers too, when compared to the recent version. But it’s still a landmark film, and deserving of all its celebrated recognition.
Strangelove is a great movie not just for what is on the screen, but for its influential place in history.
Strangelove is dated. It’s not going to resonate with younger folks who didn’t grow up during the Cuban missile crisis. Sellers’ humor is dry and doesn’t reach a lot of Yanks either. I love the movie myself.
I think this is explains Mr. Willis’ reaction completely. “Strangelove” has always been among my favorite movies, even after first seeing it about 30 years ago. But the reasons why it remains a favorite have changed. Nowadays one thing I enjoy is the odd “straight from the time capsule” feeling I get watching it. Another pleasure is the grateful awareness that those days, the days of MAD and the threat of civilization-ending war, are in the past.
Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe both make use of the same fallacy: That once a nuclear attack is launched, it cannot be called back after a certain point — the “fail safe” point, because you can’t be sure it’s really the President on the radios.
The TRUTH is that at the “fail safe” point, the planes were to hold up until they had confirmed permission to proceed.
As I said, the President and the military leadership of this country were not nearly as crazy a Kubrick claimed they were.
Just as Marines like the guy in Full Metal Jacket were mostly fiction. They were usually recycled, and then, if they didn’t make it, they were discharged.
But truth, fiction: Who cares? Let the liberal myths be preserved!
“But truth, fiction: Who cares? Let the liberal myths be preserved!”
Kubrick was an artist, a fiction filmmaker. You guys keep criticizing Strangelove as dated or because it wasn’t an “accurate” portrayal of our nuclear policy and plan. How pedantic and pinched can you get?
Kubrick was using the Cold War dynamics as a vehicle for saying something much larger about the human condition. Kubrick was known to be obsessed with getting all the little details right but that’s just an image. He cared about the details a great deal but he never let accuracy compromise his larger statement because his themes are far larger, more timeless and universal than whether or not the US has a sound nuclear policy.
Jesus, you are a total moron, Frank.
“Red Dawn” sounds more your, speed Frank. A movie with more accurate underpinnings. One predicated on more “realistic” belief systems. Let the Liberal Myths be evaporated in the white-heat of “true” cinema.
frame
We (at least I) am saying that yes Strangelove is dated but that it is a great movie and should be appreciated as such – and not as a serious predictor of actual events and trends. It reflected brilliantly how some people perceived conditions in those times.
bz,
What can one say. You assert that the characters in Strangelove aren’t overly broad? Really? Did you think about that at all before you wrote it?
Strangelove:
No sir… Right arm rolls his wheelchair backwards. Excuse me. Struggles with wayward right arm, ultimately subduing it with a beating from his left.
Also when… when they go down into the mine everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! Ahhhh! Right are reflexes into Nazi salute. He pulls it back into his lap and beats it again. Gloved hand attempts to strangle him.
frameone: You are a verbose, intellectual fraud.
Are you trying to say that the maker of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, and of course, Dr. Strangelove, was apolitical?
To paraphrase that old Yiddish joke: No, Frameone. You’re the moron!
stupidbaby: Your name says it all.
And now, once again, I find this thread annoying, and this blog as unsubstantial and inconsequential as I remembered it.
I now remember why I left.
fd10801:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZING!!!
