How great is it that Stanley Kubrick began the 1960s with a big budget Technicolor historical epic, ended the 1960s with a big budget science fiction spectacle, and right in the middle of all that made a relatively low budget, stark and strikingly unbeautiful black comedy? Even the opening titles of Dr. Strangelove look handwritten, as if the film was hastily made and sneaked out before the movie studio could dilute its acid. This was a brutal film in 1964 and it’s a brutal film today, which is remarkable considering that the Cold War is a thing of the past (the scariest things about Russia today are their boxing champions).
I’ll tell you why it holds up: Because the bad guys here aren’t the Russians. Or rather, the bad guys here aren’t only the Russians. The villain here is the whole system of national defense and its inherent fallibility. All it takes is one crazy guy in an influential position, some mis-communication and a little equipment failure for all hell to break loose. It’s a prime setting for farce and this film goes there without fear.
Everybody talks about how great Peter Sellers is here—he plays three parts and is brilliant in all of them—but George C. Scott steals the movie. The story goes that Stanley Kubrick deliberately chose Scott’s most over-the-top performance in each take and it shows. Scott’s General Buck Turgidson is a cartoon character of the highest order, but Scott sells him to us with such natural skill that we’d gladly take more of him. See this movie in a theater with a crowd and Scott gets the biggest laughs. His tiniest gestures are funny.