László ANDOR

FEPS Secretary General

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Stanley Kubrick, 1964

It was over 60 years ago that the world was as close to nuclear war as it is now. The best film to tackle the greatest anxiety of the time, nuclear war, was released shortly after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Producing a hilarious black comedy about this deeply distressing period of history required two outstanding cinema personalities: Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers.

The 36-year-old Kubrick (co-writer, director and producer) had spent years studying the politics as well as the technology of war. He thus had an exact knowledge of both the functioning and the effects of the bomb. However, he believed that the most effective way to tell people about the risk of nuclear weapons had to be a satirical comedy. This required a top-class comedian. And so it was that the 39-year-old Sellers, the world-renowned Inspector Clouseau from The Pink Panther, came to be cast in Dr. Strangelove. With much improvisation, Sellers played three leading roles: Group Captain Mandrake, who discovers that disaster is imminent; US President Mufflay, who in principle should be the most powerful character, but in reality is not; and the titular character himself, Dr Strangelove.

Much of the film is played inside a mock B-52 bomber and war room, which never existed in reality, but which became so real in viewers’ minds that when Ronald Reagan became president he looked for it in the White House.

The film presents a slightly exaggerated scenario in which erratic human behaviour and technological failure can trigger the most destructive weapons, while all efforts to avoid the impending catastrophe fail, with madness then prevailing. The madness of loving the idea of total annihilation is impersonated by Dr Strangelove, a scientist of German origin, who occasionally manifests eruptions of his suppressed emotional and intellectual loyalty to the Führer. His figure is a fusion of ex-Nazi rocket engineer Werner von Braun and Los Alamos alumnus Edward Teller, who during the cold war went on to design and increasingly advocate destructive nuclear weapons.Kubrick was not the first artist to elaborate on a nuclear nightmare. Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt had already done so in his 1961 drama The Physicists. But, drawing inspiration from Freud, Kubrick takes us to the psychoanalytical side, where a sense of weakness can trigger disproportionate aggression. His film also invites discussion about science in general, and connects to the question of our time: can human inventions, including the most destructive, take control over humanity? At a time of wall-to-wall jingoism and military escalation, this question still resonates with viewers today.