Fail Safe (1964)

In the news recently it was revealed in 1983 a Soviet engineer actually had the foresight to prevent World War III, when he correctly surmised an attack by US missiles to be a computer error. Perhaps he had read the book Fail Safe as his guiding light - certainly my father had, in one gripping read, which Sidney Lumet makes into an equally gripping film.

The 1963 film version just happened to suffer the fate of being made the same year - and by the same studio, Columbia - as Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Kubrick's aforementioned film starring Peter Sellers was released first, and thus won the plaudits and the awards and a niche in cinematic history. Fail Safe, which followed it after a delayed release, is to my mind the much more effective film, particularly at depicting the escalating horror of its subject.

It's one of the curious ironies of modern culture that the same story tends to get told at the same time; whether through the general zeitgeist of the period, or perhaps that sneaky agents or writers got hold of other people's ideas and thrust them forward: also in the 1960s, there were two biopics of Jean Harlow; in 1994 the story of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was told twice in Tombstone and also Wyatt Earp; in 1992 the Bicentenary of the discovery of the American continent was covered in two rather variable films about Christopher Columbus (with even one Carry On version!); in 1974 both Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers had the story rights to books about tower blocks on fire, and took the unusual step of combining the two to make The Towering Inferno.

Certainly the nuclear menace was ever present through the 1950s and 60s - so it's understandable if writers and filmmakers got the same idea - and has sadly never really gone away, despite occasional peace accords and climbdowns amongst the more intelligent world leaders. Another curious similarity with Dr. Strangelove is the two films' curious fascination with sexual politics in a world where only a few men may survive. In Kubrick's film the theme is quite explicitly explored, and even in a more seriously minded film like Fail Safe, at a dinner party given by the oily Walter Matthau as Walter Groetescheler (a character roughly based on Henry Kissinger), lectures about the possibilities of survival during annihilation, and one of his glamorous guests (Nancy Berg) is briefly turned on by the idea. Groetescheler is less inclined, for all his sliminess however, and goes about his job, which is to consult the government and the Defence Department about tactics in the Ultimate War.

All the characters, indeed, are going about their everyday lives, which is perhaps what makes Fail Safe so much more compelling, and frightening. One of its other players in this game is Colonel Cassio (Fritz Weaver), a dutiful but edgy officer with family problems at home, underneath his more correct disciplinarian commanding officer General Bogan (Frank Overton). Likewise, the man who is given the job of mistakenly flying the US bomber towards Moscow (Edward Binns) is no gun-ho Slim Pickens type, but a regular fella who "likes" the personal touch.

The main thrust of the story is around General Warren Black (Dan O'Herlihy), suffering from a recurring nightmare involving a matador and the responsibility he holds as one of the key officers within the Pentagon.

As in Sidney Lumet's equally compelling Twelve Angry Men, each of these characters' true nature comes out the more they are pushed to the limit in the face of the horror of accidental nuclear war. What makes Fail Safe such a compelling and plausible scenario is the presence of Henry Fonda as the President - never a more dependable image of Presidential integrity, but even he is potentially outwitted by the mechanics of computers and two over-eager superpowers trying to outfox each other. Through a restrained budget where Lumet uses individual oppressive rooms rather than a generally wider canvas, President Fonda makes his red phone calls to his opposite number Moscow, who is represented only in translation form by a young Larry Hagman, which makes for compelling, taut black-and-white drama that Lumet in particular in the 60s was so good at.

The escalating tension and drama as the negotiations unfold, is the stuff that nightmares are made of. The closing message does little to reassure:

"THE PRODUCERS OF THIS FILM WISH TO STRESS THAT IT IS THE STATED POSITION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE AND THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE THAT A RIGIDLY ENFORCED SYSTEM OF SAFEGUARDS AND CONTROLS INSURE THAT OCCURRENCES SUCH AS THOSE DEPICTED IN THIS STORY CANNOT HAPPEN."