‘Dr. Strangelove’ At 60: A Nuclear War Planner On The Nightmare Comedy
The nightmare comedy in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece remains as razor-sharp as ever with the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists kept the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight for 2024, signaling that the world remains closer than ever before to catastrophe. China, Russia, and the United States, the three largest nuclear powers, have essentially allowed agreements for arms control to collapse and are fueling a 21st century arms race to modernize their nuclear arsenals.
Since 1947, the group of scientific and technological experts has gauged global threats through the Doomsday Clock. It was first set at seven minutes to midnight. U.S. and Soviet Union bomb tests pushed the Bulletin to move the clock forward to two minutes to midnight in 1953. But a decade later, the clock was moved to 12 minutes to midnight after the U.S. and Soviet Union signed a treaty limiting some atmospheric nuclear testing.
The Cuban missile crisis greatly intensified the threat of nuclear annihilation in 1962 and unfolded while director Stanley Kubrick was producing his masterpiece, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
Kubrick’s classic satirical film starring Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens, James Earl Jones, Tracy Reed, and Peter Sellers (in three roles) marks its sixtieth anniversary this year. It was released on January 29, 1964.
Back in 2017, I spoke to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about his book, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.”
Read the full article at The Wide Shot.