On the 10th anniversary of Kubrick’s passing: “Dr. Strangelove”

The previous installment of the Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) retrospective discusses “The Killing.”

Released in the same year as “Goldfinger,” Kubrick’s satire on nuclear Armageddon could be a Bond film minus 007. With the super spy out of the equation and no one to save the world in the nick of time, we are obliged to watch the comings and goings of Bond’s supporting characters: the generals, presidents, and ambassadors who are usually on the periphery of his heroics.

By revealing the absurdities behind the logic of a nuclear deterrent, Kubrick also debunks the myth behind Bond and our fascination with the ultimate action hero. How could one man, no matter how well trained, ever hope to defeat the detached creatures who came up the theory of mutually assured destruction? Fighting super villains like Auric Goldfinger is one thing, taking on hoards of bureaucrats and their military advisers with absolute belief in their system, even when it fails, is another altogether.

Chief among these villains is General Buck Turgidson, an opportunistic warmonger with the same disregard for life shown by the generals in “Paths of Glory.” George C. Scott plays him as his name suggests – a turgid bully of a man and a raving anti-communist. He shuffles around in his Hawaiian shirt and shorts like a man in search of his barbecue, content with letting his mistress and secretary, Miss Scott, take the call that warns him of the disaster ahead.

Surrounded by mirrors, using a sun lamp and laying on Turgidson’s bed, Miss Scott is not a million miles away from the iconic image of Jill Masterson covered in gold paint. Masterson in “Goldfinger” is a pawn used and abused by two powerful men. On the surface, we get the same impression of Miss Scott as she fields the fateful call from Colonel Puntridge. Her tone presumes an affair with the Colonel but she, unlike Masterson, seems in control of her situation. Only later in the film, when Buck advises her to say her prayers, do we realise she is as powerless as the golden figure lying dead on Bond’s bed.

The counterpoint to Turgidson’s boyish jingoism is General Jack D. Ripper, a cigar-chomping Sterlyng Hayden. If Scott is all gum-chewing lunacy then Hayden plays his psychopath as if he were the only sane man in the movie. Ripper is responsible for the attack on the U.S.S.R because he believes the Russians are fluoridating American water and even “children’s ice cream,” a dastardly Bond plot if ever there was one!

Kubrick shoots Ripper from below; his medals pushed out like a high-ranking dartboard. Hayden rattles off his insane diatribes in long takes, teeth clenched with every chiselled crevice visible on his indefatigable face. Ripper, like Turgidson, is highly sexed, but unlike the selfish lover that Buck is, Ripper favours the tantric approach by denying his women his “essence”.

It is hard to say who is the most unsettling of the two generals. Ripper is obviously deranged, but deeply believes in a plot that introduces “a foreign substance into our bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual.” However, Scott’s Turgidson is the more frightening as he favours, like Patton (whom he would later play) making the most of a dreadful situation and risk civilian casualties of “ten to twenty million killed, tops”.

Trying to keep both maniacs in check is Peter Sellers in two of his three roles. Ripper’s conscience is Group Captain Mandrake, a former Spitfighter pilot who seems desperately out of his league in the nuclear age. Like Great Britain’s post Second World War relationship with the United States, Mandrake is very much Ripper’s junior partner. His politely reasoned arguments for the recall codes are constantly dwarfed by the General’s increasing paranoia.

Turgidson’s critic is the mildly spoken President Muffley. Sellers plays the President with a sense of restrained astonishment even as the increasingly catastrophic nuclear plans are revealed one by one. Muffley is the film’s moral compass, willing to sacrifice national pride for world peace, much to Turgidson’s chagrin. But as the situation becomes hopeless even he is taken in by the survival plans of the former Nazi Dr. Strangelove.

Sellers’ third creation, Dr. Strangelove, is a classic Fritz Lang villain in the mould of Dr. Mabuse, no doubt partly based on Werner von Braun and the other Nazi scientists employed by the Americans through Operation Paperclip. The disfigured criminal mastermind would be a staple of Bond films, yet Strangelove, unlike Goldfinger and his ilk, ultimately triumphs. Nuclear destruction enables Strangelove to plan for an underground master race and the final triumph for Hitler over the superpowers from beyond the grave.

The Bond theme is further developed by Kubrick’s employment of “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger” designer Ken Adam. His famous War Room set could be hiding Ernst Blofeld or his SPECTRE henchmen amongst the infinite shadows. We get the feeling that if Strangelove had his way, there would be a trapdoor straight into a shark pool and a portrait of the Führer where the big board is.

Adam covered the enormous table in green baize at Kubrick’s request to help make the actors feel they were gambling over the future of the human race. This is just one of the game references used in the film to disguise the horrific reality of war. Buck refers to “Operation Dropkick” and Ripper retrieves his machine gun from his golf bag. Golf and cards are also used in “Goldfinger” as preludes to the final violent encounter at Fort Knox between Bond and Auric.

“Dr. Strangelove” even has a climatic battle in an US Air force base, yet another staple of the Bond genre. Instead of rooting for Bond to come to the rescue we are hoping for the painfully nervous Mandrake to persuade Ripper to give him the codes. Kubrick used a handheld camera and film stock normally reserved for combat photography to give a realistic portrayal of combat. This, as in “Paths of Glory,” highlights how far removed the deep-focus generals are from their men.

Instead of Q’s arsenal of secret gadgets and bullet-proof Aston Martins, we are presented with the awesome power of a B52 bomber, tricked out with seemingly innocent switches and levers brought into their deadly focus by Kubrick’s superbly controlled zooms. Each zoom indicates another stage closer to oblivion.

Kubrick finishes off his anti-Bond movie by using Dame Vera Lynn’s version of “We’ll Meet Again” over a montage of exploding hydrogen bombs, a more sombre theme song than another future Dame, Shirley Bassey, sang for “Goldfinger.”

The absence of a 007 figure makes “Dr. Strangelove” one of the most damning critiques on the lunacy and hypocrisy surrounding nuclear weapons that cinema has produced. Years later, Kubrick secretly helped Adam light the super tanker set for the Bond film,” The Spy Who Loved Me.” One can only stop and wonder what he would have made of it if he had directed the entire feature. “Dr. Strangelove” gives us a pretty good idea.