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Now
let's look at how not to portray the insanity of nuclear war. We
give you Fail-Safe (1964). Where Dr. Strangelove
made Armageddon into black comedy with a frighteningly plausible
premise (American General goes bonkers and undercuts all the
safeguards to launch a nuclear attack.) Fail-Safe dishes up
plonkingly serious drama with a premise that is the living example of
Moonbat Crazy.
The idea behind Fail-Safe is that US bombers are controlled by
elaborate computers that are too complex for anyone to even remotely
understand (This is 1964, remember, and your wristwatch can
out-perform their computers without breaking a sweat). An off
course airliner is mistaken for a Soviet missile (Early warning radar
stations are manned by chimps, apparently) and the US Air Force sends
their bombers immediately to their fail-safe positions.
When the mistake is discovered, the bombers are recalled, but due to a
technical fault that is never explained one bomber group gets the go
code to attack Moscow. And wouldn't you know it, the innocent
Soviets just happen to be testing a new jamming system so the recall
signal can't be sent.
I haven't even mentioned Walter Matthau playing a sinister
caricature of Robert McNamara bent on lighting off World War Three
(which is priceless when you realise what a spineless character the
real McNamara turned out to be), or the Air Force officers with
personal problems so severe you wonder how they ever passed their
security evaluations.
 Long story short, neither the Americans nor the Soviets can stop the
bombers, Moscow is destroyed, and Henry Fonda in his best
give-me-the-Oscar™-dammit intense acting H-bombs New York as a peace
offering that springs from the sort of logic that made people think
that Howard Dean would be an ideal presidential candidate.
Directed by Sidney Lumet and
scripted by blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein, this is one of those
dedicated left-wing films which pushes the
The-Soviets-are-our-misunderstood-friends-and-anyone-who-thinks-otherwise-is-a-dangerous-paranoid
line for all it's worth right down to having an American and Soviet
General wishing one another wistful goodbyes over the Hot Line as the bombs fall.
That would be fair enough, but unfortunately the other side of the
argument that the real problem is sharing the neighbourhood with a nuclear-armed Communist
dictatorship bent on conquest is given short shrift beyond grim
parody of the "better dead than red"* variety.
I find it really odd that a director like Lumet, who is notorious for
his social conscience, churned out such an overwrought, one-sided piece
while Kubrick, the biggest cynic Hollywood ever produced, hit the nail
so squarely on the head and made it a comedy to boot.
*As a curious footnote, the actual phrase was "better
red than dead," which was chanted so comfortingly by the CND in the
'50s.
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