Joe Dante on FAIL SAFE
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2013
- Sidney Lumet's minimalist adaptation of the doomsday best seller is one of the director's most unappreciated works, overshadowed then and now by the comically apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove. Lumet creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread that intensified the jitters of its anxious post-Cuban Missile Crisis audience.
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In 1964 when I was 11 years old, my brother Eddie and I journeyed to the Park Plaza theater in the Bronx to see a matinee of "Tarzan The Magnificent." We decided to stay and see the main feature which was "Fail-Safe." The movie totally electrified us and we soon forgot all about Tarzan. We grew up a little that day. A six degrees of separation side note: Stanley Kubrick, also a Bronx boy, shot his first student film in the balcony of the same theater ten years before.
Joe Morrissey Stella Star: So you see into the future. All these years you never told me. Think of all the trouble I might have avoided.
Akton: You would have tried to change the future, which is against the law. So therefore I can tell you nothing.
Love starcrash movie also the mst3k episode was the funniest 🥳
Seven Days in May was not about accidental nuclear war. It was about a military take over of the U.S. gov't. Mind you, I love all three of these movies.
This obscure, old, low-budget, black and white film is better directed, acted, scripted, and more exciting than 99% of the movies today.
Yep!!!
Sidney Lumet is fantastic.
This is one of the many great films I ended up seeing in my grandmother's living room on the black & white Philco in the late 1960's. I wasn't very old so I didn't understand all of this film, but the scene of them getting the pilot's wife on the radio to try and talk him back is still one of the most chilling things I've ever seen.
hibob418 📼
I vaguely remember it, grim but excellent.
The wife should have tried to say something that only her husband would know. Instead, she just repeated the same "You've got to turn back".
You are absolutely correct of course, but the plot would never recover.
I saw the movie for the first time about 24 hours ago and that sudden screechy sound on the phone still haunts me... what a gutpunch of a Final act
"What do we do, Mr. Chairman?
What do we say to the dead?"
Love that line.
KarlBunker you’re crazy I’m not crazy I don’t give a beep from night of the comet 📼
Nothing, they won't hear you.
I must have seen this on the Sunday Afternoon Theater, back in the early 1970's, during a dreary winter day in Boston.
I thought it was very haunting and intense and yes, it remains one of my favorites too!
So many intriguing films from the past are just not seen these days by younger people, and the stories are gradually being lost in time.
How true...
Ralph Rosenblum was a great editor with a special talent for opening up and making dynamic films that might've been static and stagey in other, lesser and less daring and less innovative hands. He did this, in part, by incorporating many techniques pioneered by the French New Wave. For another great Rosenblum editing job, opening up and bringing a dynamic cinematic aesthetic to a potentially stagey production of the same era as Fail Safe, see the 1965 movie adaptation of Herb Gardner's play A Thousand Clowns. Rosenblum was also editor on Woody Allen's early films. Rosenblum wrote one of the great - and I think essential - books on film editing, entitled When the Shooting Stops... The Cutting Begjns, which is still available for anyone, whether you're an interested observer or itching to make movies in any format yourself, who wants to learn what an editor's job is all about.
Yup, read that years ago. Still remember the revelations about Annie Hall and The Night They Raided Minsk's.
One of my favorites. I had read the novel in Jr. High English class but shock value seeing the film in 1964 was unforgettable.
This and Strangelove were destined to have the second one released fail. If this came out first, few would have gone to see Strangelove because they were still in shock, and the few who went would have been mad that the topic was treated lightly. There was UHF station, indie of course, that when I was a little kid ran a mix of old horor, scifi, occasional cheap westerns or WWII movies to fill afternoons while the networks has sports. I remember they had Strangelove on Saturday, this on Sunday, the weekened ABC did The Day After as their Sunday movie. I didn't get to stay up that late when I was 6, but this scared me enough. At the time, I was living about five miles off the end of a SAC runway. I still love Dr Strangelove, but this still is unnerving 39 years later.
Fail-Safe > Dr. Strangelove. More taut, better-acted, better-plotted, and more lasting, if for no other reason than that final sound of the Moscow phone melting.
Talk about bleak! A stellar cast and great direction by Lumet of a horrific script. My two favorite scenes? Hagman's reaction to the President's solution..." Holy Mother of God. " And Janet Ward as Helen Grady, the pilot's wife. Lumet hired her for one day and didn't tell her anything about the movie. Just say this page of dialogue. Her heart-wrenching performance is superb. When she turns away from the microphone and screams " NOOOO! " I get goosebumps. The finale will stick to you for a long time. Unforgettable.
Loved all three movies. Fail Safe, Seven Days in May, and especially Dr. Strangelove. Great stuff.
I love this movie it's as good as dr strangelove and 7 days in may I love the 64 3 as I call them
An unusually mature handling of the nuclear peril theme!
My 7th grade History teacher Mr. Simplicio showed this movie in class back in the early 70's.
Great movie with a perfect ending.
You can also add The Bedford Incident to this category and perhaps The Manchuria Candidate.
A very nice film...
I think the idea that the Soviets would know who was flying and good imitate their voices to be absurd.
very true, " I mean, you take your average Russkie" and they cant imitate an American accent very well. I didnt realize there was mention of knowing "who was flying", that's even ridiculous today. I guess it was meant to show the belief that strategy and technology in the Art of War had reached dizzying levels.
An important while very entertaining movie, even today...
Many disturbing parts in Fail Safe. The American officer talking to the Russian as he gets eradicated while on the phone... and the ending.
Brr. Yeah, that's the most chilling moment. Just shows you don't need special effects, there's no one who watches that scene who doesn't picture the final moments in their head.
It was meant to be that way, Einstein...
Though I was too young to appreciate them when they were released, I watch all 3 of those nightmares from 1964 whenever I happen to catch them.
I also enjoyed the made for TV remake of Fail-Safe.
I watched this in 1985 and I was shocked by the extent that portrayed the weakness of the human mind and its ability to be manipulated by fear of the unknown.
Take a look at a list of the films directed by Sidney Lumet. Has anyone working within the confines of commercial American cinema produced such a varied output and one of such quality?
No they haven't he is fantastic. TV educated lean and taut as a wire.
As a teen I was in downtown Brooklyn with my grand mother and saw this movie just starting . I sent her home and went in thinking I would get some popcorn at some slow part . I NEVER LEFT THAT SEAT ! AND i LEFT IN A COLD SWEAT !
Seven Days In May was not about accidental nuclear war but a fourth film from that era was: The Bedford Incident (1965)
Saw that movie a few times .Amazing that the cast of movie was so good.
One word gripping
Fail Safe 1964 is the best movie of all time.
Totally agree. I saw this on TV decades ago, and I saw the George Clooney version which was done as a live teleplay with an all star cast. If I remember correctly Richard Dreyfuss played The President.
That actress begging her husband to abort the mission stole the movie!
Yes she did. Sidney Lumet knew how to pick em
It was interesting that the government not only refused to cooperate with this but tried to block its making.
Joe, did you grow up in Boonton? I'm from Kinnelon but grew up in Totowa. As a kid I saw all the 50s Sci-Fi movies at the Plaza movie theater in Paterson. Did you ever go to the "Plaza" to watch 50s Sci-fi? That theater was famous for showing all the old original Sci-Fi movies when they first came to the screen. I hope you are still around and doing well. It's now almost 2020. Its seven years since you posted this video.
At the end of this great film you know the mistaken pilot can't take verbal orders, but you'd think his wife would've been prepped better by intel people to speak with him---having 2-3 little things ready to mention that absolutely only he and she would know, and/or having her ask HIM for a question whose answer would prove/disprove who she is. Who could've thought that just her pleading and crying would have worked?
That ruined the whole movie for me!
if she did convince him to turn around then we would not have had a movie
You had to understand the rigorous psychological tests those flight crews had to pass through before they were approved for bomber duty. Then came the incessant training and the unannounced Organization Readiness Inspections (ORI). SAC was the very last defence against the Soviet Union's first strike attack. The prevailing philosophy was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The Soviets had to know with a certainty that if they launched a first strike, the US Bombers and ICMBs retaliatory strike would get through and totally wipe their society out of existence. This issue was discussed in Dr. Strangelove in the "Doomsday" scene. See the Jimmy Stewart film "Strategic Air Command" for some idea of the intensity of training for the entire base and the degree of inspections during an ORI. For the importance of the training of ICBM missile crews, see the beginning of the Mathew Broderick movie "Wargames". After authenticating the order to launch their missiles, the senior officer breaks protocol by requesting conformation and finally takes his hand off his key refusing to carryout his orders to launch the missiles. The junior officer follows protocol by ordering his senior to put his hand on the key, finally pulling his sidearm. The scene cuts away before the senior officer is shot, as required by regulations, for dereliction of duty, failure to follow lawful orders, and cowardice in time of war. "By Dawn's Early Light" and "The Day After" are two other sources.
They knew the pilot would not turn back. He had spent his military career waiting for the call. That means being prepared to give orders to kill millions of people every minute of every hour of every day for over a decade. Approved leave or medical orders being the only time he would be free from that responsibility.
They had to try for the sake of the millions of lives in the Soviet Union and the millions of lives in the US.
He knew it was his wife. Couldn't you see he was on the horns of an ultimate, horrifying dilemma?
This was a very good film, being shot in black and white really made the film the masterpiece it is!
The Matador....
The origin of "Megadeath" namesake from the book Dr. Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) carries.
I saw this on T.V. at about 2 in the morning, long before I got around to watching Dr. Strangelove. It was vaguely entertaining while it was one, but the next day I'd pretty much forgotten about it.
Derek Smallshorts cool👻
That's a Great story. I've already forgotten it.
I was 10 when I saw this, ultimate get under the desk children, noia/neuro film, scary brilliant, total 60's serious.
It was a brilliant film great script and top draw acting 👍
I am surprised that nobody mentions as if its secret that there are two endings for fail safe--dialogue is identical but one uses Fonda as President the other uses someone else as president. How could it be for such an important movie there are two identical endings shown with different Presidents but nobody says anything about it?
how is it possible this could happen even when experts upload about the film and mention connections with Stranglove but say nothing there are two identical endings with different Presidents?
Donde puedo verla en español. Gracias.
Good movie saw this on the dailymotion website 9 years ago👻
CAP811 baby!
I mean there was a remake???and yet the experts say nothing??
Everything in the Fail Safe happens in under 12 hr.'s
Columbia did really foolish thing by releasing Strangelove first. Once Strangelove came out, it was hard to take a movie like Fail-Safe seriously.
What they should've done was release Fail-Safe first and then release Strangelove as a comedic response to Fail-Safe.
But what do I know? I'm not a studio executive (and I was born ten years after the fact)
The good cities are the ones you can walk in. Unfortunately; most cities are car-centric.
I agree, great movie, bad trailer! "Hey guys, looks like we've got some of the greatest acting talent ever assembled for a movie, with a crackling tense script and taut direction for what in all essence is Twelve Angry Nukes. How's the trailer coming along...? Hmm. Needs more jump-cuts, shaky-cam, comic-sans pop art font and bleep-bloop electronica."
Better than Strangelove.
Inferior to Dr. Strangelove. Kubrick's "the whole thing is crazy" approach is much better.
While I don't think it's as great a film as Dr. Strangelove, it's still a great movie. Frankly I'm happy I exist in a world where I get at least two great but horrifyingly bleak nuclear war movies.
No, wait.
Two movies about the same subject can be great. It's not a mutually exclusive either/or selection.
Stanley Kubrick was a pretentious overrated hack. Only a few geeks like Kubrick.
Stanley Kubrick is overrated.