It's the big five-oh — fifty years! — since the release of the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers. A masterpiece of black comedy, it was not hailed as such by everyone back in 1964 because, I suppose, some of its premises and speculations were quite close and uncomfy.
As Eric Schlosser pointed out in this article earlier this year, an amazing amount of it was prescient at least about possibilities if not outcomes. I wonder if anyone could or would make a movie like that today…a film that toyed in that way with the concept of nuclear war or something similarly dire. Global warming is starting to look like a pretty formidable threat. I don't see anyone joking about that.
And in this new article, David Denby reminds us what the world was like when Dr. Strangelove (etc.) first debuted. The film also has a value in reminding us of that era and our fears of the time. I was twelve years old in '64 and a bit too young to be worried about what it was worried about. But I sure recall adults who saw it and thought they were watching next month's newscasts. Thanks to Greg Kelly for pointing me to Mr. Denby's piece.