Fail-Safe. 1964. Directed by Sidney Lumet.

(10/5/00)

Fail-Safe is a chilling thing to watch even now. One can only imagine what it would have felt like to sit through it in 1964. That was around the time when America was terrified of the Russians and we were stocking bomb shelters in our basements. My immediate reaction is to think that Fail-Safe might actually be more effective than Dr. Strangelove, the latter's greater popularity notwithstanding. Strangelove plays nuclear war for laughs, thereby making it less threatening. The plot is so unabashedly unbelievable that it seems to have an underlying message of: "Not to worry."

Fail-Safe takes the opposite approach. It aims to be believable and really scare its audience with the possibility of what just could happen. It describes a situation where a series of accidents send American missiles to bomb Moscow. And to prove that this really was an accident, that America didn't mean it and is sorry about it, the American president, played by Henry Fonda, has American planes bomb New York City. That is pretty unbelievable itself, but it is made believable enough.

Who, in 1964, could have played the American president with as much dignity and authority as Henry Fonda? The only name that comes to mind is Gregory Peck. Fonda is just right as the anguished commander-in-chief who bears the fate of the world on his shoulders.

The one disappointing moment to do with Fonda's president is when he lectures the Russian chairman over the phone about how the two of them are responsible for this catastrophe. He speaks like an authority figure, almost talking down to the Russian head of state and that scene really didn't come off.

I did like the fact that we only see the crisis from the American side. We never see the Russians who are engaged in desperate attempts to prevent the crisis. They are the unknown, the other. We don't see them so it is hard to trust them and to work together with them. Bonds do form as the countries work together, but they are difficult and tentative. And since we see it all from one side only we have no choice but to identify with the Americans.

Walter Matthau is eerily memorable as "The Professor," a war-monger advisor (I guess) to the military who sees the catastrophic accident as a stroke of good fortune, our chance to really wipe out the Soviet Union. This man, coldly logical and calculating, espouses values that are anti-human and anti-life. What's scary is that his words are so logical and persuasive; what is even scarier is the thought that such men are in positions of power and influence. Matthau's character disturbs and frightens me more than Dr. Strangelove who is a caricature.

The film as a whole has the look of an old-fashioned television drama I might have caught late at night many years ago. The black-and-white photography is perfectly suited to its tense, claustrophobic atmosphere, especially in the bare room in which the president talks to the Russian chairman. I thought the first part of the film was hard to get interested in because of all the technical details, but as it went on I found it absorbing.

I was especially moved when the president tried to talk to the pilots of the planes with the missles and order them to return. His efforts were futile because they were specifically instructed to reject those orders which might have been counterfeit. The pilots refuse to listen and carry out their mission, even when told by the president himself that it has been a ghastly mistake.

At the end of the film there is a statement on behalf of the Amjerican military saying that there are safeguards in place in our missle system which assure that the events portrayed in this film could never come to pass. The audience laughed at this as I'm sure they did in 1964 and as I'm sure they were intended to. Yet, it is 36 years later and nothing like this has ever happened. Time has certainly added perspective, yet Fail-Safe is still a very effective drama of technology going awry.