Fail Safe (1964 film)

Fail Safe
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Sidney Lumet
Screenplay by	Walter Bernstein Peter George (uncredited)
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 Fritz Weaver Edward Binns 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)

Fail Safe is a 1964 Cold War thriller film starring Henry Fonda, directed by Sidney Lumet, and released by Columbia Pictures. Based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, the film follows a crisis caused by a critical mechanical error that sends a group of U.S. strategic bombers to destroy Moscow, and the ensuing attempts to stop the attack from triggering a Soviet retaliatory nuclear strike. Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Edward Binns, Larry Hagman, and Fritz Weaver appear in support.

Plot

United States Air Force General Black flies to Washington, D.C., to attend a conference led by Dr. Groeteschele, a political advisor renowned for his expertise on nuclear weapons strategy.

Groeteschele is a fervent anti-communist. At a dinner party the previous evening, he dismissed the fears that a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would destroy the human race. To him, nuclear war, like any other, must have a victor and a vanquished, and the millions who might die in one are the price to be paid to end the threat of Communism.

USAF early warning radar indicates that an unidentified aircraft is tracking over Hudson Bay, a potential circumpolar Soviet preemptive strike. The alert causes a scramble of U.S. Air Force strategic nuclear bombers. After heightened tensions at SAC - which happen routinely - the intruder is identified as an off-course civilian airliner. However, a computer error causes a single U.S. bomber flight, Group 6, to receive apparently valid orders for a nuclear attack on Moscow. Colonel Jack Grady, the group's commander, obeys them, and six supersonic "Vindicator" bombers shriek over the Arctic toward Moscow. Attempts to rescind the order fail because of U.S. safeguards against a fraudulent recall, compounded once over the Soviet Union by a better than expected Russian ability to jam U.S. radio communications.

The President of the United States personally attempts to have the bombers recalled, to no avail, then orders them shot down. Groeteschele continues to lobby for a fullscale U.S. strike to piggy back on the serendipity of an accidental attack. The military—including Black—warns the President that the Soviets will retaliate with everything they have, just as the U.S. did after Pearl Harbor, if we compound things in any way. U.S. fighters scramble to intercept Group 6, but are only marginally faster than the Mach II Vindicators and run out of fuel before their missiles can reach them, then plunge into the Arctic waters.

Communications are opened with the Soviet Premier. With U.S. help the Soviets harmlessly trigger the Vindicators' defense missiles. The President struggles to find a solution that will avert a nuclear holocaust. He dispatches General Black, a college chum, on a secret mission to New York City.

The Soviets destroy most of Group 6, but ignore SAC commander General Bogan's desperate pleas to focus only on the lead plane, allowing it to evade their defenses.

Drawing on the Bible, the President proposes an "eye for an eye" to the Soviet Premier, offering to sacrifice New York City if that will pacify the Soviet leadership and prevent any retaliatory attack from it. Wistfully he asks if just making the offer is enough to spare millions of lives. The Premier responds by asking him what he would do if he were in his place.

As Grady nears Moscow, Soviet jamming has ceased and American radio contact resumes, but flight commander Grady still regards every attempt to scuttle the attack as a Soviet ruse. Both the President and Grady's own wife desperately beg him to stop, but he refuses to yield. To maximize bomb damage, he tells his crew they will go in low, even though they will die in the explosion; no-one resists.

Per prearrangement described to the Soviet Premier the President remains in contact with the U.S. ambassador in Moscow until his telephone melts, confirming the worst. He orders General Black, whose wife and children are in New York City, to go through with his mission - which is to destroy it with hydrogen bombs. The President knows his own wife is there as well.

Black obeys, taking full responsibility by dropping the bombs himself, then commits suicide by lethal injection.

New Yorkers are completely oblivious to any crisis underway; the decision had already been made that initiating an evacuation would only cause panic but not save enough lives to be worth the harm done.

Glimpses of them in all walks of life and activities are shown rapidly one after the next. Which abruptly stop in freeze-frame, one after the next, as everyone is incinerated in their tracks.

Cast

Edward Binns as Colonel Jack Grady (right)

• Dan O'Herlihy as Brigadier General Warren A. "Blackie" Black, USAF
• Walter Matthau as Professor Groeteschele
• Frank Overton as General Bogan, USAF
• Edward Binns as Colonel Jack Grady, USAF
• Fritz Weaver as Colonel Cascio, USAF
• Henry Fonda as the President of the United States
• Larry Hagman as Buck, the President's interpreter
• William Hansen as Defense Secretary Swenson
• Russell Hardie as General Stark
• Russell Collins as Gordon Knapp
• Sorrell Booke as Congressman Raskob
• Nancy Berg as Ilsa Woolfe
• John Connell as Thomas
• Frank Simpson as Sullivan
• Hildy Parks as Betty Black
• Janet Ward as Helen Grady
• Dom DeLuise, as Master Sergeant Collins, USAF
• Dana Elcar as Mr. Foster
• Stewart Germain as Mr. Cascio
• Louise Larabee as Mrs. Cascio
• Frieda Altman as Mrs. Jennie Johnson

Production

The film was shot in black and white, in a dramatic, theatrical style, with claustrophobic close-ups, sharp shadows and dramatic silences between several characters. Except for diegetic 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 Strategic Air Command war room, the Pentagon war conference room, the White House's underground bunker, and a single "Vindicator" bomber cockpit (in reality a flight simulator). Shots of normal daily life are seen only after the opening credits and in the final scene depicting an ordinary New York City day, its residents entirely unsuspecting of their imminent destruction, each vignette ending with a freeze-frame shot at the moment of impact.

The character of Groeteschele was inspired, according to Lumet's audio commentary on the film, by Hudson Institute military strategist Herman Kahn.

The "Vindicator" bombers are represented in the film by stock footage of Convair B-58 Hustlers, which could fly at twice the speed of sound. Fighters sent to attack the bombers are illustrated by film clips variously of the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, Convair F-102 Delta Dagger, and Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. Stock footage was used because the Air Force objected to presenting the U.S. nuclear strike force being thrown into deadly disarray by an equipment malfunction and declined to cooperate in the production. A nightmarish quality is achieved by showing numerous flying sequences in photographic negative, as if being illuminated by a brilliant nuclear flash. In several of the negative sequences, the "Soviet interceptors" are actually French-built Dassault Mirage III fighters with Israeli markings.

Reception

When Fail Safe opened in October 1964, it garnered excellent critical reviews, but its box-office performance was poor..

Critical response

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.

The film's reception with both critics and the public was compounded by the prior release of the Stanley Kubrick nuclear war satire Dr. Strangelove, which had appeared in January 1964, nine months ahead of Fail Safe's October release. Still, the film was later lauded as a Cold War thriller. The novel sold well for the remainder of the 20th century, and the film was given high marks for retaining the essence of the novel.

Accolades

The film was nominated at the 1966 BAFTA Awards for the United Nations Award category.

Lawsuit

Fail Safe so closely resembled Peter George's novel Red Alert, on which Stanley Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove was based, that screenwriter/director Kubrick and George filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. The case was settled out of court, with Columbia Pictures (which had financed and was distributing Dr. Strangelove) buying and distributing the independently produced Fail Safe. Kubrick insisted that the studio release his movie first.

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

Bibliography

• Dolan Edward F. Jr. Hollywood Goes to War. London: Bison Books, 1985. ISBN 0-86124-229-7.
• Evans, Alun. Brassey's Guide to War Films. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57488-263-5.
• Harwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. "A Viewer's Guide to Aviation Movies". The Making of the Great Aviation Films, General Aviation Series, Volume 2, 1989.
• LoBrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-306-80906-4.

External links

• Fail Safe at the TCM Movie Database
• Fail Safe at IMDb
• Fail Safe at Rotten Tomatoes
• Fail Safe at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Fail Safe: Very Little Left of the World an essay by Bilge Ebiri at the Criterion Collection