Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Description

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) has long been recognised as one of the key artistic expressions of the nuclear age. Made at a time when nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was a real possibility, the film is menacing, exhilarating, thrilling, insightful and very funny. Combining a scene-by-scene analysis of Dr. Strangelove with new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive, Peter Kramer's study foregrounds the connections the film establishes between the Cold War and World War II, and between sixties America and Nazi Germany. How did the film come to be named after a character who only appears in it very briefly? Why does he turn out to be a Nazi? And how are his ideas for post-apocalyptic survival in mineshafts connected to the sexual fantasies of the military men who destroy life on the surface of the Earth? This special edition features original cover artwork by Marian Bantjes.

Peter Kramer is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars (2005), A Clockwork Orange (2011) and the BFI Film Classic on 2001: A Space Odyssey (2010).

Kramer was privileged to have been given access to Kubrick's private papers, and so is able to say for certain what was in the director's mind as well as chronicling the troubled history of its production with some authority. He also offers a comprehensive scene-by-scene analysis, including details of proposed alternatives which were never filmed or which didn't make the final cut, making this an essential book for the serious film student. -- Good Book Guide