Apr. 19, 1964 - Unusual acceptance by the critics and the public of Stanley Kubrick’s film, “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” has been reported in western Europe, where it has now been playing for several weeks.
Although American officials are the main targets of the movie’s satire, the U.S. appears to have gained prestige from it because it was produced by Americans. Critical reviews from several countries make much of this example of American freedom to indulge in self-criticism.
“In the best civil and democratic tradition of America,” Corriere della Sera commented. This is the leading newspaper of Milan. Tidningen of Stockholm called the work “one of the most valuable pictures to have come from the United States.”
In the same vein, Die Zeit of Dusseldorf, West Germany, said “Dr. Strangelove is the most serious picture from American for a long time.”
Acclaim for the picture has not followed political lines. The Communist newspapers L’Unita of Rome and L’Humanité of Paris joined in stressing its qualities with perhaps a little more stress on the point that the lampoon is of American insanity.
“The happiest surprise of the year,” L’Unita said. However, it deplored a reference to a carousing Soviet Premier and the portrait of a Soviet Ambassador. L’Humanité also referred to spots of “bad taste.”
Box-office reports from Scandinavia, Italy, and France, in particular, indicated that it was the most popular film attraction in several years.
Talk about the picture has filled more than critical columns. It has formed the basis for discussions in the press and in drawing rooms about the possibilities of accidental war. Most people do not appear to believe that the risks are all on the American side.
As Tidningen put it: “If this picture is anti-American, then it is anti-Russian, anti-English, anti-French, and anti-Chinese too. It is against a system that involves terrible risks.”
However, at least one Gaullist commentator in France found in the picture justification for a key point of current French policy. André Frossard, in Le Figaro, said that even with the exaggeration removed, the picture could make one understand why France was taking a stand-off attitude toward NATO.
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