5

Dr. Strangelove is a 1964 film by American director Stanley Kubrick that lampooned Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

In the 1960's was this film a phenomenon singular to America, or were there other film makers/writers/famous figures overseas that poked fun at the extreme tensions and "perfect rationality" of MAD? Were contemporaries of Kubrick overseas also lampooning MAD, or was Dr. Strangelove unique in it's dark comedy? I think my question boiled down is "was there any measurable international reaction to what can be viewed as cavalier Americans making jokes about humanity's demise as they played the active role in that same hypothetical destruction, or did the film have overseas competition in getting a laugh out of the zaniness of it all?"

My research has consisted of googling this question 85 different ways, and I haven't turned up anything interesting, ...probably due to user error. Thanks for any answers!

3
  • 1
    It's not a film, or literature, so it isn't quite an answer to the question, but Tom Lehrer's We Will All Go Together When We Go is undoubtedly satire and definitely about Mutually Assured Destruction. Dec 29, 2017 at 16:20
  • 3
    FTR, Dr. Strangelove (like many Kubrick films) was actually a British production. Dec 29, 2017 at 20:56
  • 2
    Maybe you should ask about movies in the Movies & TV Stack Exchange ( movies.stackexchange.com ), and about books in the Literature Stack Exchange ( literature.stackexchange.com ). Sci-Fi Stack Exchange can be useful for sci-fi in general, since many of these works talk about nuclear war and atomic weapons Dec 30, 2017 at 9:08

4 Answers 4

3

I don't know of other movies (US or otherwise) that I would directly compare to Dr. Strangelove, but there is "The Mouse That Roared", which is a UK film gently mocking the American mindset at the time. It's worth watching, in my opinion, with Peter Sellers playing three different roles.

2
  • 1
    Failsafe comes to mind as another US movie.
    – Jon Custer
    Dec 29, 2017 at 16:47
  • 4
    Unless the movie of "The Mouse That Roared" was considerably different than the book (always possible, alas), it wasn't really a mocking of the US mindset, but of the European, and particularly British. At the time, the German & Japanese economies were doing much better than the British & French, thus the motivation for Grand Fenwick to attack the US, be defeated, and have its economy restored.
    – jamesqf
    Dec 29, 2017 at 20:01
3

There was a Roumanian comedy "S-a furat o bombă" (1961), translated to other languages as "A Bomb Was Stolen", "Die gestohlene Bombe", "Stolen Bomb". I've seen it in Soviet Union in a movie theater in 1960th.

IMDB - Youtube

3

The UK series (and later film) Whoops Apocalypse springs to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wytIx3_SxUU

0

The 1974 "Mr. Neutron" episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus features an increasingly unhinged American military commander (played by Michael Palin) bombing everything into smithereens in a demented series of attempts to take out the frighteningly powerful stodgy homebody, Mr. Neutron (played by Graham Chapman).

While not directly addressing MAD, it is an indirect satire since the "Commander" character is a take-off on General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) from Dr. Strangelove.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.