Word: safe
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With almost identical plot and characters, Fail Safe pretends to be a high-minded discussion of the same topic. But it comes off as a monstrous joke. Where Strangelove is mocking. Fail Safe is sententious, and where Strangelove is incisive Fail Safe is obtuse. Director Sidney Lumet has merely placed a stock collection of political and military figures in an unrealistic situation and had them mouth inanities about cold war and atomic destruction...
...there's the wise, paternal President. He gets on the hot line to Russia's Premier when a bomber group, sent beyond its fail safe point through a mechanical accident, enters Soviet territory. Despite American and Russian efforts to recall and later destroy the squadron, one plane bombs Moscow. The President must demonstrate dramatically America's lack of animosity toward Russia and prevent total disaster. So he orders another bomber to destroy New York...
Director Lumet, cursed with a terrible script, compounds his misfortune with unimaginative photography. With one shot of a B-52 flying low over its target, Stanley Kubrick represents the conflict of a desire for victory and a fear of destruction more effectively than does all of Fail Safe. But Lument's camera work, instead of adding to Fail Safe's statement, merely wears out the viewer with its monotonous tension. He uses all the standard melodramatic shots, close-ups of sweating brows and tight lips, prolonged views of radar screens and bug-eyed pilots in oxygen masks. This technique...
...Fail Safe is too absurd to be realistic, and too simple minded to be a commentary on world politics. Its only traces of realism are recognizable titles and place names, like President, 20 megaton bomb, and Moscow. The story would have lost all its impact if a fictitious city instead of New York had been destroyed. Perhaps a bombing of Hollywood would have been more appropriate...
...most effective political slogans are timely, yet live long beyond their time. Passing into the language, they help crystallize great issues of the past for future generations: "Give me liberty or give me death"; "Lebensraum"; "The world must be made safe for democracy"; "There'll always be an England"; "unconditional surrender"; "the Great Leap Forward"; "We shall overcome." In an increasingly complex society, as Hayakawa points out, such coinages are essential "short cuts to a consensus...