Paper Topic:

researching two political films

Running head : Political Films

Researching Political Films

Name of Student

Name of University

Name of Professor

Subject

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

In 1963 Stanley Kubrick brought out his contribution to popular anti-nuclear films , the classic black comedy Dr . Strangelove : Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb . The film , based on Peter George book Red Alert , tells the tale of an American air raid launched on the Soviet Union by a deranged general , Jack D . Ripper . Unknown

to Ripper , the Soviets had installed a "Doomsday Machine " which would envelop the world in a lethal shroud of radiation should one bomb fall on Russia . The film , much of it situated in the Pentagon War Room becomes a satire on the military , and leaves few unscathed as it presents a host of insane characters in the midst of the greater insanity of mutual extermination

In preparation for Strangelove Kubrick read over seventy books on nuclear war , subscribed to Missiles and Rockets and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and talked with Alistair Buchan of the British Institute for Strategic Studies . Columbia Pictures spent over 1 .5 million on the film , including 100 ,000 for a mock up of a B-52 bomber when the Air Force , not surprisingly , refused to cooperate in the filming . So realistic were the sets that one critic declared that "the movie could have very easily been written by Herman Kahn himself " and that its plot was similar to one of Kahn 's many "scenarios

Large numbers of movie goers and the vast majority of film critics found Stanley Kubrick 's production and Terry Southern 's directing worth the price of admission . The film played to record-breaking audiences in 1964 23 and became a staple on college campuses and on television during the 1960 s and 1970 s . The usually tough-to- Time film critic praised the show as "an outrageously brilliant satire -the most original American comedy in years " and declared the movie testimony to Kubrick 's arrival as "the most audacious and imaginative director the U .S . cinema has yet produced " Robert Hatch praised Kubrick for taking "a whole complex of America 's basic assumptions by the shoulder and giving them a rough shaking " Brendan Gill pronounced Strangelove ' the best American movie I 've seen in years " and "one of the best pictures I 've seen in years without regard to where it comes from " 26 Even the conservative National Review praised Kubrick for his biting satire even if he had ridiculed only "Birch Society type generals " and wistfully observed "if Stanley Kubrick ever felt the urge , he could really do a job on the Communists

In some ways Strangelove was the most profound of all the antinuclear films . Lewis Mumford saw the character Dr . Strangelove as the "central symbol of the scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination Jay Jacobs of the Reporter declared that the filmmakers "have set off a large cherry bomb in the...

12 pages

50.0 KB

Free sing-up