Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963)

Peter Sellers plays three separate roles in Stanley Kubrick’s mordant Cold War comedy in which insanity and political manoeuvrings lead to nuclear meltdown.

Stanley Kubrick originally intended a straight adaptation of Peter George’s novel Red Alert, a chilling thriller about a paranoid American general initiating a nuclear bombing mission over the USSR. But he saw the absurdity behind the retaliatory strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and decided to film it as a comedy.

In an acting tour de force, Sellers plays the British officer attempting to apprehend the psychotic general (Sterling Hayden), the US President trying to smooth things over with his Soviet opposite opposite number, and the eccentric Dr Strangelove, a German émigré scientist with an autonomous Nazi arm and wild ideas about the post-apocalyptic world.

Much of the action of Kubrick’s jet-black satirical masterpiece occurs within the cavernous War Room at the Pentagon, a space indelibly imagined by production designer Ken Adam.

1963 United Kingdom, USA
Directed by
Stanley Kubrick
Produced by
Stanley Kubrick
Written by
Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, Terry Southern
Featuring
Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden
Running time
94 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Critics

Charles Bramesco
USA
Jonathan Coe
UK
Sophie Determan
USA
Wheeler Winston Dixon
USA
John Ewing
USA
Leonardo García Tsao
Mexico
Odie Henderson
USA
Juliet Jacques
UK
Pauline Kleijer
Netherlands
Nashen Moodley
Australia
David Morrison
UK
James Mottram
UK
Orwa Nyrabia
Syria
Maria Ulfsak-Šeripova
Estonia
Wim Vanacker
Belgium

Directors

Pablo Berger
Spain
Jack Bond
UK
Paul Bush
UK
Roger Corman
Joe Dante
USA
Mark Gustafson
USA
Tom Hardiman
UK
Ahmed Jamal
UK
Matt Johnson
Canada
Michael Mann
USA
Philippe Mora
Australia
Gary Oldman
Oliver Stone
USA