Wow! What an amazing film.
This gets the coveted six stars. It’s beyond brilliant.
Everything about this movie is superlatively wonderful. The idea, the execution. The acting, directing, script, and so it goes on.
It’s famed for, amongst other things, Peter Sellers playing three major parts. And all three supremely well. Snd, as we’d expect, with a movie starring Sellers, there are elements of comedy, albeit very black comedy, from the subtle nuanced to the outright farcical.
The names of the characters are sublime: US President Merkin Muffley, Brig. Gen. Jack Ripper, Col. ‘Bat’ Guano, and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, being just a few examples.
There are several films within the main film:
There’s the flight crew, under Maj. ‘King’ Kong (Slim Pickens), who are ‘just doing their job’. This strand is mostly played as pretty straight drama, with only Picken’s slightly gung-ho newkiller cowboy role stretching the envelope. It’s a very well done subplot, especially in relation to the high-tech airborne procedural stuff.
Then there’s the dynamics between Gen. Ripper and Lionel Mandrake. The former hell bent on annihilating those damn Reds, on account of his formerly faltering libido. The latter realising his superior is sending them all to Hell in a handcart, and is nuttier than a mountain of squirrel guano.
There’s also Merkin Muffley, and his ring of power – pause must be made here to reflect on the glory that is the War Room set – wherein ‘Buck’ Turgidson and Alexi come to blows like a proper pair of clowns.
And there’s even the mini war-film, with US troops attacking Burpelson Air Base. This is shot, in the main, like a documentary, or news item. I think the choice to make the movie in black and white is also connected with the collective memory of WWII newsreels, mostly in black and white.
And set, like jewels, within these strands are some truly wonderful moments, such as the first telephone call between Merkin and his Soviet counterpart, Dmitri. The latter drunk and – like ‘Buck’, earlier – out womanising.
Some of the best lines in film history are to be heard here:
‘Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!’ Merkin Muffley
‘Women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I… I do deny them my essence.’ Gen. Jack Ripper
‘I think you’re some kind of deviated prevert…’ Col. ‘Bat’ Guano
You could say Sellers steals the show, appearing as he does – and to brilliant effect – in three key roles. But the rest of the cast are actually equally brilliant.
I have to pick out the following as particularly charismatic: Sterling Hayden as the lunatic Gen. Ripper; George C. Scott as the gruffly hawkish Gen. ‘Buck’ Turgidson; Slim Pickens, as good ol’ boy Maj. Kong.
Amongst the supporting cast, Tracy Reed is fab, as Miss Scott, Peter Bull’s Alexi is pitch perfect, and Keenan Wynn’s dim Col. ‘Bat’ Guano is priceless.
There’s one member of the B-52 crew I’d dearly love to identify; the navigator. His voice is a key part of the film, during the parts in the B-52. I think it’s this guy:
It’s a beautifully made film, with a very powerful punch, that is simultaneously hilarious and very, very chilling.
What a movie!
To finish, here’s a gallery of ‘in the making’ scenes:
FOOTNOTE:
The fourth picture, in the above ‘making of’ type gallery, is famous photographer, Weegee, with a custard-pie splattered Sellers/Muffley.
A very different ending to the film than that which was finally released was originally shot, culminating not with the ‘Mein Fuhrer, I can walk’ line (and then the exploding bombs/Vera Lynn), but a farcical custard pie fight.
It was rejected, as being too silly – not in keeping with the dark satire of the movie as a whole – and, crucially, the timing was off: there was a line where George C. Scott’s Turgidson character says ‘Gentlemen, our beloved president has been infamously struck down by a pie in the prime of his life!’
The day the movie had its first screen-test, Kennedy was assassinated. For this reason alone – never mind the scene spoiling a dark satire with unwonted levity – it’s not altogether surprising that the pie-fight ending was binned.
