In 1964, a congressman is being shown around the War Room in Omaha -- you know, the one with the huge screen showing symbols of our airplanes and their SAMs? It's all run by a computer the size of Greenland. A module in the computer fails, there is a flash on the screen, and a flight of our nuclear-armed Vindicator bombers is ordered irrevocably to attack Moscow.
At the time, a hawkish professor, Walter Matthau in a thoroughly dramatic role, is giving a presentation to a dozen generals and high-echelon Secretaries in Washington. The subject is limited nuclear war. They have The Big Screen too. The diversion of the rogue flight towards its target interrupts Matthau in mid sentence.
Deep down under all the cement and soil and dead reputations of Washington, the president, Henry Fonda, is alone with only his translator, Larry Hagman, and a couple of phones, including the hot line to Moscow, for company. His job is to see if the six misguided bombers can somehow be recalled. If not, if Moscow is obliterated, what to do next? It's all very tense, of course, and the director, Sidney Lumet, handles it as well as possible, given that it is after all a tragic story. One bomber does get through of course and it's the president's decision to remove New York City from the map to prevent an all-out nuclear war. Fonda shades his face from the overhead light (and the camera) when he gives the fateful order. Immediately after he puts down the phone, he and Hagman sit silently in medium shot, Fonda staring into space. That's one example of why I say it's "handled well." How easy it would have been to avoid understatement.
The film had the misfortune to be released at about the same time as the wildly popular "Dr. Strangelove," a fashionably done and excruciatingly funny take off on the same subject, containing some almost identical shots. Well, "Fail Safe" dwelt in the shadows, financially and critically, but it was just bad luck. In 1964, the last thing we needed was another tragedy. Kubrick's movie tickled our funnybones at a time when they badly needed medical attention.
Speaking of "strange," the potential disaster of nuclear war -- accidental or otherwise -- was reduced to almost nil almost overnight with the collapse of the Soviet system sixteen years later. President G. H. W. Bush happily ordered our fail-safe bombers and our missiles to stand down. I expected dancing in the streets. Instead, the quidnuncs lost interest; there were a few weeks of pleased follow ups on the news, and then the crisis quickly faded into the mists, a welcome but essentially humdrum historical incident. It was replaced by a great deal of talk about "the peace dividend", which never materialized.
"Dr. Strangelove" is the more inventive film. It's an outrage. But "Fail Safe" should be seen by everyone now and then, particularly students in schools and universities for whom "the Cold War" is little more than a definition that must be memorized from their history texts. (In your Blue Books, describe in one page or more the meaning of "Remember the Maine." Twenty points.)
All Western nations, most particularly the US, have reckless and suicidal enemies but the threat they represent is of a different order. The policy that contained the USSR was acronymed as MADD -- "mutually assured destruction" -- and it no longer exists, thank God.
At the time, a hawkish professor, Walter Matthau in a thoroughly dramatic role, is giving a presentation to a dozen generals and high-echelon Secretaries in Washington. The subject is limited nuclear war. They have The Big Screen too. The diversion of the rogue flight towards its target interrupts Matthau in mid sentence.
Deep down under all the cement and soil and dead reputations of Washington, the president, Henry Fonda, is alone with only his translator, Larry Hagman, and a couple of phones, including the hot line to Moscow, for company. His job is to see if the six misguided bombers can somehow be recalled. If not, if Moscow is obliterated, what to do next? It's all very tense, of course, and the director, Sidney Lumet, handles it as well as possible, given that it is after all a tragic story. One bomber does get through of course and it's the president's decision to remove New York City from the map to prevent an all-out nuclear war. Fonda shades his face from the overhead light (and the camera) when he gives the fateful order. Immediately after he puts down the phone, he and Hagman sit silently in medium shot, Fonda staring into space. That's one example of why I say it's "handled well." How easy it would have been to avoid understatement.
The film had the misfortune to be released at about the same time as the wildly popular "Dr. Strangelove," a fashionably done and excruciatingly funny take off on the same subject, containing some almost identical shots. Well, "Fail Safe" dwelt in the shadows, financially and critically, but it was just bad luck. In 1964, the last thing we needed was another tragedy. Kubrick's movie tickled our funnybones at a time when they badly needed medical attention.
Speaking of "strange," the potential disaster of nuclear war -- accidental or otherwise -- was reduced to almost nil almost overnight with the collapse of the Soviet system sixteen years later. President G. H. W. Bush happily ordered our fail-safe bombers and our missiles to stand down. I expected dancing in the streets. Instead, the quidnuncs lost interest; there were a few weeks of pleased follow ups on the news, and then the crisis quickly faded into the mists, a welcome but essentially humdrum historical incident. It was replaced by a great deal of talk about "the peace dividend", which never materialized.
"Dr. Strangelove" is the more inventive film. It's an outrage. But "Fail Safe" should be seen by everyone now and then, particularly students in schools and universities for whom "the Cold War" is little more than a definition that must be memorized from their history texts. (In your Blue Books, describe in one page or more the meaning of "Remember the Maine." Twenty points.)
All Western nations, most particularly the US, have reckless and suicidal enemies but the threat they represent is of a different order. The policy that contained the USSR was acronymed as MADD -- "mutually assured destruction" -- and it no longer exists, thank God.