Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Stanley Kubrick’s 95 minute film opens with a general ordering a nuclear strike on his own authority. It comes from Peter George’s 1958 novel Red Alert; Kubrick planned a serious drama and turned to comedy early in the writing. American financed, the film shot in England at Shepperton. Ken Adam’s War Room is triangular: Kubrick wanted the strongest geometric form, a room reading as a giant bomb shelter. He had its round table covered in green baize, knowing black and white could never show the colour, so the generals would look like men playing poker for the fate of the world. Peter Sellers plays three parts: the RAF officer Mandrake, President Muffley and Dr. Strangelove. That brought a Best Actor nomination, one of four the film lost; Rex Harrison took the award for My Fair Lady. Two premises later moved toward fact: the Federation of American Scientists notes a lone commander starting an attack stayed possible until coded locks reached most US nuclear weapons, and that the Soviets tested Perimetr, a partly automated retaliation system, in 1984. A good fit if you want the joke built on how the nuclear chain of command works. Not for anyone after the cut ending in a War Room pie fight: it was filmed, then removed, and accounts of why disagree.