Note: I have something to attend to this morning, so what follows is a post from behind the green door that everyone hated. In this review of what many consider the greatest cinematic satire ever, I reveal that I have no sense of humor.

Human communication rests upon a vast set of shared assumptions about the world that are just assumed by speaker and receiver. When the speaker says, “I am low on gas”, the receiver responds with, “There is a gas station at the next exit” because he assumes that the driver mentioned the gas level because he will soon need to gas up the car, so he is asking for the location of the next gas station. In that simple exchange lies a lot of shared assumptions.

This is why comedy does not travel very well. In the old days, comics would do bits on how they travelled to other countries to do their act only to confuse the audience with jokes that made no sense to them. Bob Newhart did a bit on how Germans could not understand why a bald man was called “Curly” and a fat man was called Tiny”, which played on the idea of shared assumptions. The joke itself relied on the American audience’s shared concept of the German personality.

Today, jokes about the Germans being exacting fanatics would not make much sense to young people as Germany has no meaning to them. If they have ever met a German, it was online, and he spoke perfect internet gibberish. The shared assumptions about the cultural differences between Germans and Americans has been lost over time, so jokes based on those assumptions stop being funny for the same reason jokes about phonebooths make little sense to a Zoomer.

That came to mind while watching Dr. Strangelove, a film many critics claim is the greatest comedy in the history of film. It was released at the height of the Cold War and is a satire on the fears and assumptions about the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis was still on the minds of people, so a satire on nuclear war would have relied upon the shared assumptions regarding the issue at the time. For someone not alive when this was made, those assumptions are a mystery.

I did not laugh a single time during the whole film. I was never hostile to it, but I could not get any of the jokes, no matter how hard I tried. I even stopped the film and read the wiki page hoping for some clues. I wound up reading a number of old reviews that did not provide much help. They just assume you get the jokes and never bother to explain any of them. The closest you get are mentions of Sellers making sport of Adlai Stevenson in his role as President.

For those who have not seen the film, it is about a rogue general in the 1960’s who launches a wave of B-52 bombers armed with nukes at the Soviets. He does it in such a way that no one can recall them without his code. The rest of the film is about the President and his advisers debating about how to stop Armageddon. Peter Sellers plays three roles in the film. He is the aide to the crazy general, the President and a weird Nazi scientist who is the President’s science advisor.

The central conflict in the film is how to stop the bombers. The plan is to tell the Soviets so they can shoot down the bombers, but we learn that the Soviets built a doomsday device that will go off if even one bomb lands. I would like to say at this point hijinks ensue, but there are no hijinks. The closest we get is when the crazy general tells his aide Mandrake (Sellers) that he believes the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans.

Again, the film did not make me angry. It is just that the things being mocked are outside my frame of reference. Making sport of the nuclear protocols of the 1960’s may have been outlandishly funny in 1964, but not now. I am not even sure that was what was being mocked. I did pick up that they were mocking country people, as Slim Pickens plays the role of the main bomber pilot, and he plays it like he played the role of overseer in Blazing Saddles.

That brought to mind something else. Jewish comedy falls into two broad categories, mockery of majority social norms and self-defeat. The comedy here was of the first type, but those majority social norms were killed off a long time ago. That is why this film no longer works as a comedy, unless you were alive at this time. The one bit that you can still pickup is the mockery of normal white people like the character of Major Kong (Pickens) or General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott).

Otherwise, the jokes not only fail to land, but they fail to register as jokes. Even Peter Sellers comes off as if he is playing it straight, despite the fact he is best remembered for his over-the-top performances as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films. I did sort of get that he was making fun of Nazis in the role of Dr. Strangelove, the crazy German scientist who is the President’s science advisor. As President and aide to the crazy general, he comes off perfectly normal.

In the end, it is a well-made film. This may be why it is ranked so high. Kubrick managed to get three great performances from Sellers, who was known for being a bit unstable and an alcoholic. He tricked George C. Scott into playing his role in a way that Scott never would have done otherwise. Reportedly, he did this by first having Scott ham it up as practice, then film it the way Scott wanted it done. Kubrick then used the film from the hammy practice sessions.

Interestingly, Sellers was slated to play four roles. The studio only agreed to back the film if Sellers was in all the major roles, which is crazy. Sellers got hurt so he could not get into the bomber to play Major T. J. “King” Kong. The role was initially offered to John Wayne who ignored the offer. Then Kubrick got Slim Pickens to do it, but without telling him the point of the film or giving him the script. He wanted Pickens to be Pickens from the many Westerns for which he was known best.

The film is made in black and white. Even though the satire does not work on me, I can see why they did not do it in color. It would have come off as farce rather than satire if it were in color. That may be why it does not hold up. The jokes were probably subtle for the time, so after sixty years they are impossible to spot, especially being shot in black and white, which has the effect on a modern audience of projecting seriousness, rather than lightheartedness or silliness.

In the end, I did not hate it. Frankly, I am not sure what to make of it. It is well put together and the acting is first rate. If there was a bit more character development, it would be a solid drama. It was intended to be satire, so the characters are intentionally two-dimensional, but they are well-written and performed by great actors. Otherwise, there is nothing here to love or hate. It is one of those films you probably love if you are a film historian, but as a regular viewer is nothing special.

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