Sightlines · reception

How Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was received

1964 · Stanley Kubrick · Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb on Sightlines

The arc

A hit and an Oscar nominee on release — though some critics, notably Bosley Crowther in the New York Times, called it irresponsible and 'sick' for laughing at nuclear annihilation. Now it's routinely ranked among the greatest comedies ever made, and the 'too dark to joke about' complaint reads as the film's whole point.

What’s debated

The perennial fan debate is Strangelove vs. Fail Safe — Sidney Lumet's dead-serious version of essentially the same premise released the same year — and whether satire or sobriety was the right response to the bomb.

Its footprint

'Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!' is one of the most quoted lines in movie history, the cowboy riding the bomb is one of cinema's most parodied images, and the title's 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the...' construction is still a headline template sixty years on.

Where it stands

Absolute canon — a fixture of greatest-comedy and greatest-film lists alike, and for many cinephiles the entry point to Kubrick.

Did you know? Peter Sellers was set to play a fourth role, the B-52 pilot Major Kong, but was replaced by Slim Pickens after struggling with the Texan accent and injuring his ankle — Pickens was reportedly never told the film was a comedy and played it straight.

A Deleuzian reading of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb →