United States, 1964
Directed by Sidney Lumet
With Dan O’Herlihy (General Black), Frank Overton (General Bogan), Fritz Weaver (Colonel Cascio), Edward Binns (Colonel Grady), Henry Fonda (the President), Walter Matthau (Dr. Groeteschele), Larry Hagman (Buck), William Hansen (Swenson)
Starting for many of the characters at 5:30 am, it should have been an ordinary day of work, though taking place in the rarefied world of military and political decision-making. It is true there are small but spectacular signs that all cannot be well in their lives. General Black barely recovers from a bad dream he often makes and featuring bullfighting, Colonel Cascio must deal again with his intoxicated and whining parents, his superior General Bogan wonders how to deal with the politico visiting the base he commands, keen on questioning the costly and cumbersome technological process used to protect the nation from an atomic attack and even more to lead such an attack against the enemy, and Dr. Groeteschele falls out fast with the gorgeous but decadent woman who asked him to drive her back home after the too long exclusive party they attended and where the political science scholar dazzled, or annoyed, folks with his intellectual and moral provocations – the kind of bright if idle thought allowing him to be attend later in the morning to a meeting at the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Swenson, the same meeting General Black must go to.
The theme is conspicuously defined for the audience: Armageddon lurks in the background as those men in charge and the challenge of running an atomic arsenal under pressure weighs heavily on them. This is a very topical theme for the American culture as the Cold War is shaping tragically world affairs, always on the verge of becoming a hot and apocalyptic conflict, as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 reminded everybody.
The plot in fact is all about that feared Armageddon taking center stage and crushing the world but not because of political moves: there is no enemy pulling the trigger, or no traitor wreaking havoc, or simply a mad guy, no genuine human error, no foolish decision by any low-level operator that gets unwittingly far-ranging consequences embroiling the big leaders. It is all about a glitch, perfectly visible on the silver screen in the shape of a big flash in the running frames. Something happened in the sky where the bombers of the base run by General Bogan flew – a technical explanation would be delivered later in the film, for what it is worth – and then one group of bombers, headed by seasoned pilot Colonel Grady gets the wrong order, the kind of order nobody would have ever given, that anybody would have given with resignation in fact.
The story becomes then the nail-biting and desperate attempt by the president of the United States to keep a general atomic war with the Soviet Union to occur, relying on the barely tested skills of a shaken young interpreter, Buck, and on another kind of sophisticated technology, extensive and secret communication means connecting between them the Pentagon, where General Black, an old friend of the president, and Dr. Groeteschele spar, the base run by General Bogan, where his deputy threatens to break down, the offices of the Soviet Union’s Prime Minister and then of the Soviet Union’s chiefs of staff, and briefly, lately, fruitlessly, with Colonel Grady’s plane. As it becomes clear that the United States bombers cannot be recalled or even destroyed by fellow American pilots, the point is to convince the enemy to trust the American and to set up a collaboration enabling the Soviet Union to ward off the menace. But once it is plain they cannot pull it off, the only option would be to make the ultimate sacrifice – as Armageddon is set to prevail it is the shadow of Abraham that shapes the course of the events and raises the burning and real issue the plot rises, that is the moral and political responsibility of the decision-maker and the meaning of peace and war at the atom age.
The settings are impressive, with the barely lit command center of General Bogan’s displaying rows of computer- and monitor-laden desk and a giant screen where the tragedy is so mechanically and precisely displayed in symbols over a map of the world – for this kind of production back in 1964 and without any input from the Pentagon this is quite a feat – as well as with the realistic, cramped and high-tech padded cabin of Colonel Grady’s fateful bomber. Meanwhile, the small, sparse, unadorned, unassuming white room where the President and his interpreter stand, the latter trying hard to keep his composure even as the usually confident and rational former struggles to deal with the situation and to come up with the right proposals, however dire they could be, conveys fully the deep solitude of a doomed decision-maker forced to face the unacceptable.
The editing shifts aptly from one locus to another, organically capturing the rising tension fueled by the horrifically relentless march of events and incidents. This tension, this actually terrible dread seizing the characters, is also reflected, more precisely splashed across the silver screen by powerfully composed closeups, which hint at the formative years of director Sidney Lumet in television production but still have a crisp cinematic edge.
This is a movie keen on showing and telling, on narrating and discussing, on being hair-raising and thought-provoking. It mostly does the job well, save for a few dramatic moments sounding a bit overreaching, like the collapse of Colonel Cascio. The point is not defined by simplistic pacifist terms: it is rather a rigorous and worried examination of the overbearing but unwieldy power of technology and science in the practice of war, suggesting, clearly to the authorities’ displeasure, how the system may not be that safe and instead cause a fresh, wide set of challenges and risks. The eloquent, heartbreaking final call made by the President still emphasize the import of negotiations and detente, at a time when those concepts were just mooted in the political arena, but the whole story remains a high-tech scare story. On more political term, the clever idea is not to pit one bloc against another but lies in swapping expected positions between opposite characters. It is a seasoned general, Black, who underlines how even more dehumanizing and senseless war has become at the atom age and in the heat of the Cold War, showing concerns for both military’s ethics and future and for the mankind as a whole, without consideration for any ideological or cultural hierarchy; conversely, it is the highly refined and erudite scholar Dr. Groeteschele who proves a fanatic, far less smart and alert than he pretends, blinded by chauvinistic prejudice. Troubles in this kind of crisis do not always stem from flaws, or even downright stupidity, of the men of war – the Civvy Street can be as unsafe.
(This is in marked contrast with that other big production on Armageddon that the Columbia studio was at the same time bankrolling. But director Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strange Love, or How I Stop Worrying And Learned to Love the Bomb” is essentially a satire clearly targeting the military and their eager embrace of the atomic bomb thanks to dubious advisers and pathetic patriotism. The Kubrick movie is nicely farcical and is even more inspired visually; the director was ruthless in promoting his work and views, or rather the sarcastic but rough ideas he had on the topic, perhaps, all vanity put aside, aware how comedy could have a better impact on the audience’s imagination and then thoughts; so Columbia did everything to favor that other 1964 film on an atomic disaster and “Fail Safe” was released later and less than expected for what had been the first to be put on production. But it holds its ground handsomely and passes just fine the test of time, as interesting on the topic as “Dr. Strangelove”, looking in fact like a complement).