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

35mm print (black & white, sound) 93 min. USA/Britain

“’Dr. Strangelove came from my great desire to do something about the nuclear nightmare….I was struck by the paradoxes of every variation of the problem from one extreme to the other—from the paradoxes of unilateral disarmament to the first strike….Then I was talking one day with Alastair Buchan from the Institute of Strategic Studies and he mentioned the novel Red Alert which was published in 1958. I read it and of course I was completely taken by it. Now Red Alert is a completely serious suspense story. My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came when I was trying to work on it…. This film presents a situation where a mad general launches his wing of bombers, and from then on everybody takes it quite seriously…in this case, a bit too late. Kennedy made a speech where he said that the world is living under a nuclear Sword of Damocles which can be cut by accident, miscalculation, or madness, and in this case it’s cut by madness.’ (Stanley Kubrick, in Films and Filming, 1963).” (the Imaginary War, Press Release)