Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
DVD | Digital HD
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, Peter Bull, Keenan Wynn, Sterling Hayden
Columbia Pictures
Original Release date: January 29, 1964

Fathom Events, Sony Pictures, and Turner Classic Movies’ Big Screen Classics series brought Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb back to theaters in the U.S. for select dates this month (with two screenings still to come), so this was my chance to see Stanley Kubrick‘s 1964 satire on the big screen for the first time.

When Dr. Strangelove came out in 1964, the United States in deep in Cold War paranoia. The 1950s saw the rise of McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Hollywood blacklists, and the Rosenbergs trial. As the decade turned, Americans sat with clenched teeth during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. A year later, President John F. Kennedy was dead. Only a visionary filmmaker like Stanley Kubrick could make light of such a dark period in history. What he co-wrote and directed was a fiercely anti-war movie, and one of the greatest satires ever made. It was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay (Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George), and Actor (Peter Sellers). Based on the political climate right now, maybe it is the perfect film to be re-introduced into American pop culture.