Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Film - Essay Example Strangelove to directly confront many of the most dangerously held beliefs of its American audiences is not only that it does so in comic manner, but that the form of comedy is muted. In fact, future generations could well be forgiven for reading the film as a straight drama. Every scene in Dr. Strangelove is filmed and edited and acted with the utmost seriousness. Despite being one of the funniest movies ever made, actors are not allowed to give in to the temptation either foreshadow the joke or even deliver a "punch line." Despite the fact that the eminently talented physical comedian Peter Sellers stars in three different roles, he is never allowed to mug for the camera. In other words, Dr. Strangelove is a comedy, but it is a comedy based on dramatic irony. One need only watch the far more earnest film that broaches almost exactly the same plot, Fail-Safe, to see how important this approach has been to making Dr. Strangelove a classic, while relegating the dramatic interpretation to merely being a great, but little-known movie. It may only have been possible to fully explore the true extent of the nuclear nightmare through the distancing that comedy naturally allows, but Stanley Kubrick wisely chose not to make anyone in the movie to act as though th ey were making a c comedy. One of the brilliant elements of Dr.