Doctor Folamour

Doctor Folamour or: how I learned how to more to make some me and to like the bomb ( Dr. Strangelove gold: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb ) is a British film carried out by Stanley Kubrick, left to the cinema in 1964.

Synopsis

The history proceeds into full Cold war. The American general Jack D. Ripper, struck paranoiac madness, decides to send B-52 to strike the the USSR. The president of the the United States order an emergency meeting in the underground room of strategic command to try to avoid a nuclear War.

A debate begins then between holding of the various political options and soldiers who are offered to the president. The only possibility to avoid a major conflict, is to provide to the Soviets the positions planes, so that they destroy them. Some are cut down and the others are pointed out, except one. The ambassador of the USSR, convened in order to testify to the bona fide of the US president, mentions the existence of a secret system of defense which would start the nuclear holocaust in the event of attack against the USSR. The aforementioned secret system of defense bears the name of the Explosive device . One consults then Doctor Folamour, a scientist, defector of the Nazi regime, nostalgic and psychopathe. He explains a possible solution then to save the mankind.

During this time, the crew of B-52 carries out his mission towards his term, unquestionable of the cogency of the order which it received, despite everything the difficulties that it does not fail to meet.

Data sheet

Distribution

  • Peter Sellers: Colonel Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Doctor Folamour
  • George C. Scott: General “Buck” Turgidson
  • Sterling Hayden: General Jack D. Ripper
  • Keenan Wynn: Colonel “Beats” Guano
  • Slim Pickens: Commander T.J. “King” Kong
  • Peter Bull: Ambassador of Sadesky
  • Tracy Reed: Miss Scott
  • James Earl Jones: Lieutenant Lothar Zogg
  • Jack Creley: Mr. Staines

Scenes of anthology

  • conversation with the hot Line, where the president tests with all the diplomacy possible to render comprehensible with his Soviet counterpart, awaked in middle of the night, and apparently drunk, the gravity of the situation;
  • Peter Sellers as a British officer, trying to prevent, in vain, the general Jack D. Ripper (literally “Jack the eventror”) to shoot with the machine-gun at soldiers compatriots come to seek it, and that it took for Russians invading his base;
  • the commander of the B-52 which reads by the intercom with its crew the instructions and their fact of checking the contents of their Trousse of survival, where one finds in particular Préservatif S and a miniature Bible;
  • the American general “Buck” Turgidson and the Soviet ambassador while coming to the hands are stopped in their brawl by the president of the United States declaring “ Sirs, you cannot you beat here! It is the Room of War. ”
  • Dr. Folamour, with the pronounced Germanic accent, trying to control its right-hand man which tends to make safety Nazi spontaneously.
  • the commander of the B-52, hat texan on the head, overlapping the released bomb of the plane…

Comments

  • Stanley Kubrick nourishes with this film a matter which seems to him expensive: the denunciation of the incompetence of the Politicking S of any edge, criminal nonsense of the projects and the achievements of the complex militaro-industrialists.

  • Doctor Folamour is, according to Bosley Crowther for the NewYork Times, " the macabre joke more shocking that I ever met, and at the same time one of the most clever points and most sharp-edged, directed against the clumsiness and the madness of the army, never yet shown with the screen . ". The original title is with him alone of a Cynisme which makes quiver.

  • the exit of film was envisaged on November 22nd, 1963, but this day is assassinated the president John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The production must push back the following coming out date with the beginning of the year.

  • At the time of its exit into the room, the tension between the United States and the USSR had dropped by a notch, returning film of a less extreme topicality. Boundary point ( Fail-Safe ) of Sidney Lumet, turned the same year, embroiders around the same topic. Kubrick makes it repurchase by Columbia Pictures so that it does not compromise the exit of its own film. The exploitation in room of Boundary point will be deferred in October 1964.

  • Peter Sellers only interprets with him three roles: the President of the United States of America, the English officer Lionel Mandrake and Doctor Folamour. It should have played a fourth character, Commander T.J. King Kong which controls the B-52, but a wound with ankle empéché it to hold this very physical role. Why four roles? According to Kubrick, they were four roles requiring a great comic talent that only according to him Peter Sellers held.

  • George C. Scott, which interprets the General “Buck” Turgidson, had the reputation to be an actor very difficult to direct. But Kubrick knew its weak point: the actor had the certainty, wrongly obviously, to be a good player of failures. The realizer being itself a good player, had installed a chess-board on the plate. He beat Scott with punt seams and gained thus his respect.

  • Doctor Folamour, the character-title, incarnates recycling by the the United States (and the the USSR and the France) of the scientists having work (and often adhered) to the Nazi regime. With a comic excess, Kubrick recalls that the phenomenon is far from being an invention (see Opération Paperclip). The Doctor is inspired by Edward Teller, one of the engineers of the Projet Manhattan and inventor of the Bombe H and Wernher von Braun, former German scientist with the pay of the Nazis (counterpart of the Turgidson general: " For me it is always Fritz"), father of V1 and V2. The first became later adviser technical US president, it had a strong Hungarian accent and a temperament “goes-T war” décomplexé, the second, specialist in the propulsions and flying gears of the rockets made take off the programs of NASA.

  • the “machine of the last judgment” describes by the Soviet ambassador in film was really studied by the USSR with the beginning of the year 1960. The project consisted of a vast cargo liner filled with radioactive products hautements having to circulate along the Soviet coasts and which, in the event of destruction of the USSR, was to play the part of immense a radiological Bombe. This project forever considering the day in front of the obvious risks of accident.

  • the underground Operating room at the end of film constitutes a very personal vision by Kubrick of the emergency operational center of the presidency ( Presidential Emergency Operations Center ) located under the right wing of the White House.

  • One tells that when it entered to the White House in 1980, Ronald Reagan required where was the room of war. It was necessary to explain to the new president who this room was a pure fabrication of Stanley Kubrick.

  • Throughout film, the flight of B52 is accompanied by a recurring musical topic pertaining to the US traditional folklore: When Johnny Comes Marching Home , declined in several variations.

  • the final scene of the nuclear holocaust is accompanied by the song We' L meet again by the English singer Vera Lynn, to which Roger Waters in The Wall of Pink Floyd in 1979.

will refer

Distinctions

  • BAFTA of the best film
  • Oscars of the cinema 1964: four nominations in the categories better film, better realizer, better scenario, better actor (Peter Sellers).

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • Doctor Folamour on Internet Movie Database
  • Analysis of film on Dvdclassik.com

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