![]() ![]() I saw Fail-Safe on TVOntario, and the host, Elwy Yost, interviewed Matthau after the movie. ![]() And his ruthless adherence to his own form of "rationality" makes the character coherent and above all, believable. He has an odd scene early on with an admiring young woman, that only hints at the twisted sexuality that permeates Dr. The kind of advisor who would say that as long as 40 million Soviets are wiped out, 30 million casualties at home are acceptable. Walter Matthau does a fine job in a rare dramatic role, this time as a civilian advisor on the subject of nuclear war. All of these scenes are remarkable tribute to Lumet's power to tell a story and build tension and to Fonda's acting, considering that we only see Fonda in a bland, featureless room deep below the Earth's surface. This is staged very effectively by Lumet, who gives the President a naive young interpreter for conversations with the Soviets. Henry Fonda does an especially good job as the President, who refuses to crack under unbearable pressure. The characters are well-cast and well-portrayed. In a rather demented clock, considering the topic, which makes the movie only more effective. In comparison to another very "serious" movie, On the Beach, the tight plotting is again very much in Fail-Safe's favour - yes, the message is somber and sincere, but this movie also moves forward like clockwork. Strangelove, but Fail-Safe delivers the same message with a feverish intensity. The President (Henry Fonda) gets called in to deal with the situation, and he gives some orders to General Black that tie the ending in with the opening nightmare. When the blip turns out to be a non-threat, the planes are indeed called back, but some kind of malfunction in the system lets one plane go on with its mission to bomb Moscow. A blip appears on the big board - is this the long-feared attack by Soviet forces? American planes are sent to the fail-safe point, a line beyond which they cannot be called back. ![]() Meanwhile, a Senator and a businessman are touring a command centre in Nebraska. He wakes up and goes to a meeting at the Pentagon. General Black (played by Dan O'Herlihy) is dreaming of a bull being speared to death by a matador. Both movies do good work in emphasizing the profound lunacy of nuclear war.įail-Safe opens with a dream sequence. Strangelove for what it is - an absolutely unique work of genius - but I was also deeply impressed with Fail-Safe. I am glad that audiences over the years have recognized Dr. Fail-Safe also boasts some excellent acting, especially from Henry Fonda as the President and Walter Matthau as a civilian advisor. It has none of the same problems of pacing, and keeps the viewer tense and off-balance from beginning to end. Strangelove caused more of an uproar in its time, both critically and at the box office, but I feel that Fail-Safe is a superior film in some ways. The similarities between the two films caused a deal of legal flap at the time, because the basic plots are indeed copies of each other (to put it diplomatically). Fail-Safe, written by Walter Bernstein from the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, directed by Sidney Lumet, 1964, 110 min.įail-Safe has always existed in the shadow of Dr. ![]()
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