Fail Safe (1964 film)

Fail-Safe
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Sidney Lumet
Screenplay by	Walter Bernstein Peter George
Based on	Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick Harvey Wheeler
Produced by	Sidney Lumet Charles H. Maguire Max E. Youngstein
Starring	Henry Fonda Dan O'Herlihy Walter Matthau Frank Overton Larry Hagman
Cinematography	Gerald Hirschfeld
Edited by	Ralph Rosenblum
Color process	Black and white
Production company	Columbia Pictures
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	October 7, 1964 (1964-10-07)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1.8 million (rentals)[1]

Fail Safe is a 1964 Cold War thriller film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. It portrays a fictional account of a nuclear crisis. The film features performances by actors Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Larry Hagman, Fritz Weaver, Dana Elcar, Dom DeLuise and Sorrell Booke.

Fail Safe describes how Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States lead to an accidental thermonuclear first strike after an error sends a group of US bombers to bomb Moscow.

In 2000, the novel was adapted again as a televised play starring George Clooney, Richard Dreyfuss and Noah Wyle, and broadcast live in black and white on CBS.

Plot[]

USAF General Black (Dan O'Herlihy) has been suffering recurring dreams in which he views a Spanish bullfight, in which a matador kills a bull before a cheering crowd. It's an image Black cannot understand, and he wakes from the dream in a cold sweat. Black dresses and flies from New York to Washington, where he and other high ranking officers will participate in a conference lead by Dr. Groeteschele, a political scientist renowned for his expertise on the politics of nuclear weapons.

Groeteschele is himself a fervent anticommunist. At a dinner party the evening before, he discusses nuclear war with other guests, dismissing the fears that such a war would destroy the human race. Nuclear war, as much as previous wars, must have a victor and a loser, and the millions killed in such a war are the price to be paid to end the threat of Soviet communism.

During a VIP visit to the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, the Air Force's early warning radar indicates that an unidentified aircraft has intruded into American airspace. Shortly after, the "intruder" is identified as an off-course civilian airliner and the alert is cancelled, but a computer error causes one American bomber group, Group 6, to receive apparently valid orders for a nuclear attack on Moscow. Attempts to rescind this order fail because a new Soviet countermeasure jams American radio communications. Unable to obtain confirmation or denial of the order, Colonel Jack Grady (Edward Binns), the US bomber group's commander, follows the order and commands his group to continue to their target.

The President of the United States (Henry Fonda) and his advisers attempt to recall the bombers or shoot them down. American fighters are ordered to use afterburners to intercept the bombers in time to shoot them down. Groeteschele's conference, which had been discussing possible nuclear war scenarios, is now called on to advise the President on how to deal with an actual crisis. While the military - Black included - warns the President that the Soviets will retaliate with everything they have, Groeteschele disagrees. He insists that the Russians will surrender when Group 6 reaches Moscow. The fighters, which had been flying in the opposite direction, are too far to catch the Vindicators, and plunge into the Arctic waters exhausting their fuel in a futile attempt to intercept the bombers.

Communications are opened with the Soviet leader in which mistakes on both sides (the orders to the American bombers and the Soviet jamming) are acknowledged. The jamming ceases, but the crew follows their training, dismissing the subsequent counter-orders they receive as a Soviet ruse. The President orders all American forces to cooperate with the Russians. SAC General Bogan advises the Russians on how to trigger the Vindicators' defense missiles, essentially instructing the Soviets on how to destroy the American planes in flight.

The President struggles to find a solution that will stop the Soviet Union from counter-attacking; if he fails, a nuclear holocaust will be unavoidable. He offers to sacrifice an American target to appease the skeptical Soviets and prove that the attack was indeed an error, and he orders an American bomber towards New York City. The President's advisers in the Pentagon discover that in doing so, the President is sacrificing the First Lady, who is visiting New York City. They are shocked, but are forced to agree that the President's plan is the only way to prevent nuclear war.

The Soviets destroy most of Group 6, but miss both Grady's plane and a second plane, a bomber carrying only defensive weapons, and intended as a decoy. The second plane breaks formation to draw Soviet defensive aircraft away from Grady. The ruse proves successful, and despite Bogan's desperate pleas, the Soviets concentrate their forces against the decoy aircraft, allowing Grady's Vindicator to evade their defenses.

The Russians, in desperation, fire all their weapons in the path of the remaining Vindicator. As Grady nears Moscow, the Americans are finally able to reach him via radio. Both the President and Grady's own wife desperately urge him to break off the attack. As Grady wavers, a salvo of Russian missiles targets his plane. Grady decoys the missiles with the last of his defensive missiles, causing them to detonate far above him. Though surviving the shockwave, Grady knows that his crew has received a fatal dose of radiation. Grady dismisses the pleas over the radio as a Soviet ruse. Telling his crew that they'll probably be dead in a few days, he sets his payload so that his bombs will detonate when their plane reaches Moscow. His crew grimly agrees, deciding that they probably don't have anything to go back to.

The President remains in contact with the American Ambassador in Moscow until the line abruptly cuts off with a loud squeal, the sound of the nuclear blast melting the Ambassador's phone. The President then orders General Black (Dan O'Herlihy), whose wife and children live in New York, to carry out a corresponding nuclear attack on that city, using the Empire State Building as ground zero. After releasing the bombs, Black kills himself. As he dies he calls out to his doomed wife telling her that he has at last learned the meaning of his recurring dream: The Matador, the Matador... me... me

The last moments of the film show images of people in New York going about their daily lives, unaware of the coming disaster.

Cast[]

Edward Binns as Colonel Jack Grady (right)

Production[]

The film was shot in black and white, in a dramatic, theatrical style with claustrophobic close-ups, sharp shadows and ponderous silences between several characters. Except for radio background during a scene at an Air Force base in Alaska, there is no original music score (only the electronic sound effects act as the film's main and end title music). With few exceptions, the action takes place largely in the White House underground bunker, the Pentagon war conference room, the SAC war room, and a single bomber cockpit (a "Vindicator bomber"). Shots of normal daily life are seen only after the title opening credits and in the final scene depicting an ordinary New York City day, its residents entirely unsuspecting of their imminent destruction, each scene ending with a freeze-frame shot at the moment of impact.

The Soviets are not depicted in the film. The progress of the attack is followed on giant, electronic maps in the Pentagon War Room and SAC Headquarters. Conversations with the Soviet Premier (Russian language occasionally heard in the background on the "Hot-Line") are translated by an American interpreter (Larry Hagman). Suspense builds through dialog between the President and other officials, including an advisor to the Department of Defense, Professor Groeteschele (Walter Matthau), an old college friend of the President, General Black (Dan O'Herlihy) and SAC commander General Bogan (Frank Overton). The character of Groeteschele was inspired, according to Lumet's audio commentary on the film, by military strategist Herman Kahn.^[2]

The "Vindicator" bombers (an invention of the novelists) are sometimes represented in the film with stock footage of Convair B-58 Hustlers. Fighters sent to attack the bombers are illustrated by film clips of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Convair F-102 Delta Dagger, Dassault Mirage III and McDonnell F-101 Voodoo. Stock footage was used because the United States Air Force declined to cooperate in the production, disliking the premise of a lack of control over nuclear strike forces.^[3] The scene depicting bombers taking off was stock footage of a single B-58 takeoff edited to look like several bombers taking off in succession. A nightmare quality is imparted to many of the flying sequences by depicting the planes in photographic negative. In several of the negative sequences the "Soviet interceptors" were actually French Mirage fighters with Israeli markings.

Lawsuit[]

Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove were both produced in the period after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when people became much more sensitive to the threat of nuclear war. Fail Safe so closely resembled Peter George's novel Red Alert, on which Dr. Strangelove was based, that Dr. Strangelove screenwriter/director Stanley Kubrick and George filed a copyright infringement lawsuit.^[4] The case was settled out of court.^[5] The result of the settlement was that Columbia Pictures, which had financed and was distributing Dr. Strangelove, also bought Fail Safe, which had been an independently financed production.^[6] Kubrick insisted that the studio release his movie first.^[7]

Reception[]

When Fail Safe opened in October 1964, it garnered excellent reviews, but its box office performance was poor. Its failure rested with the similarity between it and the nuclear war satire Dr. Strangelove, which had appeared in theaters first, in January 1964. Still, the film later was applauded as a Cold War thriller. The novel sold through to the 1980s and 1990s, and the film was given high marks for retaining the essence of the novel.^[8] Over the years, both the novel and the movie were well received for their depiction of a nuclear crisis, despite many critical reviews rejecting the notion that a breakdown in communication could result in the erroneous go-command depicted in the novel and the movie.^[3]

See also[]

• The Bedford Incident, a 1965 film based on a novel about an engagement between an American destroyer and a Soviet submarine in the North Atlantic.
• By Dawn's Early Light, a 1990 TV film based on the novel Trinity's Child by William Prochnau, about an accidental nuclear attack on the US and the subsequent desperate attempts to avoid nuclear annihilation.

References[]

Notes[]

Bibliography[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Fail Safe (1964 film)

• Fail Safe at the TCM Movie Database
• Fail Safe at IMDb
• Fail Safe at Rotten Tomatoes
• Fail Safe at AllMovie
• Fail Safe at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Fail Safe: Very Little Left of the World an essay by Bilge Ebiri at the Criterion Collection