#821: KUBRICK, Stanley: Dr. Stangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

KUBRICK, Stanley (United States)
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb [1964]
Spine #821
Blu-ray

Stanely Kubrick's painfully funny take on cold war anxiety is one of the fircest satires of human folly ever to come out of Hollywood. The matchless shape-shifter Peter Sellers plays three wildly different roles: Royal Air Force Captain Lionel Mandrake, timidly trying to stop a nuclear attack on the USSR ordered by an unbalanced general (Sterling Hayden); the ineffectual and perpetually dumbfounded U.S. President Merkin Muffley, who must deliver the very bad news to the Soviet Premier; and the titular Strangelove himself, a wheelchair-bound Presidential adviser with a Nazi past. Finding improbable hilarity in nearly every unimaginable scenario, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a subversive masterpiece that officially announced Kubrick as an unparalleled stylist and pitch-black ironist.

95 minutes
Black & White
Monaural
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2016
Director/Writers


Based on the book Red Alert by Peter George.
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, George, and Terry Southern.
Kubrick was 36 when he directed Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Other Kubrick films in the Collection:

#575: The Killing (1956)
#538: Paths Of Glory (1957)
#105: Sparticus (1960)
#897: Barry Lyndon (1975)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-four page booklet featuring an essay by scholar David Bromwich and a 1974 article by screenwriter Southern on the making of the film.

Commentary

None.

Interviews 1

With Kubrick scholars Mick Broderick and Rodney Hill, archivist Richard Daniels, DP and camera innovator Joe Dunton, camera operator Kelvin Pike, and David George, son of Peter, on whose novel Red Alert the film is based.

Excerpts

From a 1966 audio interview with Kubrick, conducted by physicist and author Jeremy Bernstein.

Four short documentaries

About the making of the film, the sociopolitical climate of the period, the work of actor Sellers, and the artistry of Kubrick.

Interviews 2

From 1963 with actors Sellers and Scott.

Excerpt

From a 1980 interview with Sellers from NBC’s Today show.

Trailers

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Criterion Collection By Spine #

#331: OZU, Yasujiro: Late Spring (1949)

#304: ROEG, Nicolas: The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)