Dinner And A Classic Fail Safe (1964)

"A masterly Doomsday film,
The neglect of this masterly Doomsday film is generally attributed to the fact that it came out at the wrong time, shortly after the appearance of Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" which somehow caught the viewing public's imagination far more. I find this one of cinema's greatest tragedies preferring in every way the dark seriousness of Lumet's apocalyptic nightmare to the black comedy of Kubrick's vision which somehow trivialises the subject matter. It seems to have been Lumet's lot never to have quite reaped the critical acclaim accorded to several American directors every bit as worthy such as Kazan, Kubrick and Scorcese or even lesser figures such as Ray, Coppola and Spielberg. Incomprehensible when one considers a prolific body of work that includes films as fine as "Twelve Angry Men", "A Long Day's Journey Into Night", "Fail-Safe" and "Equus" to name but a few, always purposeful and seldom less than engrossing. I wondered how "Fail-Safe", made at the height of the Cold War and very much a film of its time, would stand up to viewing today and can only say, with the delight that rediscovery sometimes brings, that I found it every bit as shattering as when it appeared in those uneasy mid-'sixties. The thing I found so remarkable is its savage attack on the paranoia that fanned the Cold War, not just on the Soviet side but on the American as well. Indeed, by making the Walter Matthau figure a mouthpiece for U.S. political bigotry, Lumet leaves us in little doubt of the States' equal culpability in aggravating a situation nothing short of lunacy. It must have been an extremely bold and brave statement to make in those crazy days. The power of "Fail-Safe" lies in the fact that it never resorts to frill. No music punctuates the action. It is filmed in a particularly dark and sombre monochrome. The settings, apart from an expansive control room, are often in claustrophobic bunker-like rooms and plane cockpits. As with the American war film genre this is a male dominated society with romantic interest completely absent. There are only the bare bones of a plot to focus on but a plot so diabolical in its implications that nothing more is needed. It seems there is nothing science or even human psychology can do to prevent an American warplane from detonating nuclear warheads over Moscow. In order to possibly circumvent a t~t for tat helter-skelter ride to world annihilation the U.S. President, brilliantly played by Henry Fonda, is forced to contemplate an order to sacrifice New York as a sign to the adversary that the initial American strike was the result of system failure rather than premeditated. Possably only an actor of Fonda's stature could have conveyed so convincingly the strength of supreme statesmanship. What an irony that it was left to a second rate actor to actually make it in the real world!"
From IMdB.com - Author: John Simpson (post@jandesimpson.wanadoo.co.uk) from Hastings, England