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Comment by BirAdam | Hacker News Reader

Dr Strangelove is my favorite film. Absolutely hilarious, and also a good satire on the actual views of some at the time.

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Same. I was lucky to see it on film once, and the theater projected it without masking, so you could see one of its most brilliant touches, that it has two aspect ratios (1.66:1 and 1.33:1) [0] depending on the scene, which enhances the "rewsreel" effect, as if unrelated stock footage were spliced together. i believe the only home video version that faithfully reproduces this is the criterion dvd, done so at kubrick's explicit demand.

The cinematography overall is brilliant, which is a hallmark of his movies of course, the most famous examples maybe being 2001, and Barry Lyndon, in which he used astrophotographical lenses to capture scenes lit only by candlelight.

Gil Taylor, Strangelove's DP, was a wartime aerial photographer for the RAF, and went on to shoot Star Wars. [1] Just so many fascinating levels of unique brilliance went into the creation of that film.

[0] http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f3/t000289.html

[1] https://ascmag.com/articles/wrap-shot-strangelove

Oh, interesting! I never knew about the aspect ratio changes. I'm going to have to track a digital version down.

It's a testament to Peter Sellers's skills that you can genuinely fail to notice that he plays three major characters.

According to his biopic he was originally slated to play Major Kong as well, but struggled to make the character work. Which is just as well since Slim Pickens is of the great highlights in the film

That is indeed remarkable. You have to pay attention to notice.

The guy was a comic; you'd think his performances would be all pratfalls and punchlines. But he was a good actor.

"You can't fight in here, gentlemen, this is the War Room!"

I think that’s what impresses me most about the film: when it was produced.

Kubrick was really insane and decades ahead of his time. Nearly every film he made was the genesis of some genre in the modern era.

Yeah.

Spartacus: Swords and sandals.

Paths of Glory: WW1 anti-war.

Strangelove: I don't know what genre that was.

2001: Space opera.

A Clockwork Orange: Dystopian sci-fi.

Barry Lyndon: Picaresque costume drama.

I haven't checked, but I think the gaps between his movie releases roughly doubled with each release.

There are some scenes in these movies that scream "Kubrick". There always seems to be a perspective shot in which the camera is pointing down the centre of some tunnel or corridor. In Paths of Glory it's a trench; in 2001, it's the aisle of the shuttle. It's usually some grand corridor.

General Ripper would fit right in today if you replaced Russia with the "Deep State".

Sterling Hayden, who plays General Ripper, kind of steals the show for me in Dr. Strangelove.

There are other top notch performances but I’ve always loved his scenes with Sellers as the RAF officer trying to reason with his madness.

The film is my favorite and George C. Scott deserves a ton of credit too. Slim Pickens is incredible as well. If there’s one character that is a bit over-the-top for me it’s Dr. Strangelove himself. It’s a close call but I wonder if the film could still work without some of the mein furher, involuntarily nazi salute stuff.

> I wonder if the film could still work without some of the mein furher, involuntarily nazi salute stuff.

That part is funnier if you recognize that the main real life person that Dr Strangelove was a spoof of was Wernher von Braun. (For more insight into the joke, listen to Tom Lehrer's song about Wernher von Braun.)

Lehrer's song about von Braun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

Also topical, his song about nuclear apocalypse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs

I think Dr Strangelove was a mixture of Herman Kahn, John von Neumann, Edward Teller and von Braun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

Yes, but for my part I still thought that bit went over the top.

(Still, Kubrick was my fave director. Can't win 'em all.)

Yes, but based on the Kubrick quote in that section of the Wikipedia article, von Braun was the main one; and von Braun is the obvious one for the "mein Fuhrer", etc., of Strangelove to be a spoof of.

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