Fail-Safe (1964)
Filmed exactly the same time as Dr. Strangelove and eerily sharing the same core plot, Fail-Safe is etched in completely different tones. There is no whisper of comedy here, and the stark, sharp filming in black and white (like its counterpart) makes the leads, especially Henry Fonda, have incredible gritty physical presence.
I remember seeing this as a kid in junior high school on a 16mm projector, and it really bothered me. I see it now and I'm impressed by parts of it very much. It depends on Fonda for its drama, for sure, and on the plot once things start to unravel. But it struggles through long sections of explication. Yes, explication--even the word is deadening. At first you want to listen and keep up, and you do, but you wish it had been paced differently, and maybe just left to our assumptions a little. Even in 1964 I think we would prefer to have seen the system at work rather than keep hearing about it. Except for the bombers themselves, the planes I mean, nothing really moves much. Maybe Walter Matthau around the conference room.
Yet, Fonda as President is remarkable, making a monument out of a limited role (he's put in a small room with one other person for most of the film), much like he did in 12 Angry Men (yes, also directed by Sidney Lumet). What the film lacks in imagination, it makes amends for in the closeups of a very convincing President facing the guilt and torment of killing a lot of New Yorkers to avoid saying goodbye to the planet. The screaming wife is a relief--I think there would have been more screaming all around in this situation--but the rooms of robotic soldiers at their desks is downright painful to watch, and unrealistic, too. This is an era (as a way of comparing rooms of people at their desks) of the space race, so you can picture "Houston" as a nerve center with actual life to it.
Yes, there are some amazing touches, beyond Fonda, and beyond a lesson in Cold War missiles. The graphics in the opening frame, for one, are so harsh and forbidding they are a brief inspiration. And the continuing apocalyptic whines, after the last frames go to white, and then black, keep penetrating even as the end credits roll. It's as if there were intentions to push this thing to higher levels of fear and some got bogged down in being accurate, and telling us the supposed truth. It's a bizarre twist that Dr. Strangelove got it more right, in the end, than Fail-Safe.
Filmed exactly the same time as Dr. Strangelove and eerily sharing the same core plot, Fail-Safe is etched in completely different tones. There is no whisper of comedy here, and the stark, sharp filming in black and white (like its counterpart) makes the leads, especially Henry Fonda, have incredible gritty physical presence.
I remember seeing this as a kid in junior high school on a 16mm projector, and it really bothered me. I see it now and I'm impressed by parts of it very much. It depends on Fonda for its drama, for sure, and on the plot once things start to unravel. But it struggles through long sections of explication. Yes, explication--even the word is deadening. At first you want to listen and keep up, and you do, but you wish it had been paced differently, and maybe just left to our assumptions a little. Even in 1964 I think we would prefer to have seen the system at work rather than keep hearing about it. Except for the bombers themselves, the planes I mean, nothing really moves much. Maybe Walter Matthau around the conference room.
Yet, Fonda as President is remarkable, making a monument out of a limited role (he's put in a small room with one other person for most of the film), much like he did in 12 Angry Men (yes, also directed by Sidney Lumet). What the film lacks in imagination, it makes amends for in the closeups of a very convincing President facing the guilt and torment of killing a lot of New Yorkers to avoid saying goodbye to the planet. The screaming wife is a relief--I think there would have been more screaming all around in this situation--but the rooms of robotic soldiers at their desks is downright painful to watch, and unrealistic, too. This is an era (as a way of comparing rooms of people at their desks) of the space race, so you can picture "Houston" as a nerve center with actual life to it.
Yes, there are some amazing touches, beyond Fonda, and beyond a lesson in Cold War missiles. The graphics in the opening frame, for one, are so harsh and forbidding they are a brief inspiration. And the continuing apocalyptic whines, after the last frames go to white, and then black, keep penetrating even as the end credits roll. It's as if there were intentions to push this thing to higher levels of fear and some got bogged down in being accurate, and telling us the supposed truth. It's a bizarre twist that Dr. Strangelove got it more right, in the end, than Fail-Safe.