奇爱博士

   这不能算战争电影，就像库布里克其他12部电影，从洛莉塔，2001太空漫游到大开眼戒，它们的哲学意味远大于作为商业片甚至类型片的意义。这部电影拍摄时正逢冷战胶着状态，大国关系处在非常微妙的平衡之中，谁都认为对方即将成为第三次世界大战的发动者，"核"成了最敏感的词汇，却又谁也割舍不下，Strange Love也就有了复杂的涵义。电影的结局是世界毁灭，这大概是历史上第一部拿现实国际政治开玩笑且以悲剧或者说是黑色幽默方式结局的电影，（在我所知的范围内）老库从来不会(Never ever)像斯皮尔博格那样给大家一个温情脉脉皆大欢喜的结局（如老库构思，斯皮尔博格拍的AI里，库设计的结局是永恒的寂静，斯却弄来了几个外星人在未来玩起死回生大赚眼泪…），这也就注定了他的每部电影都能引发无数的争论，最终部部都能载入史册。

(PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORKER, BY ERIC SCHLOSSER, ON JANUARY 23, 2014)

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Released on January 29, 1964, the film caused a good deal of controversy. Its plot suggested that a mentally deranged American general could order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, without consulting the President. One reviewer described the film as “dangerous … an evil thing about an evil thing.” Another compared it to Soviet propaganda. Although “Strangelove” was clearly a farce, with the comedian Peter Sellers playing three roles, it was criticized for being implausible. An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film “impossible on a dozen counts.” A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: “Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.” (See a compendium of clips from the film.) When “Fail-Safe”—a Hollywood thriller with a similar plot, directed by Sidney Lumet—opened, later that year, it was criticized in much the same way. “The incidents in ‘Fail-Safe’ are deliberate lies!” General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, said. “Nothing like that could happen.” The first casualty of every war is the truth—and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own. And despite the introduction of rigorous safeguards in the years since then, the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation hasn’t been completely eliminated.

The command and control of nuclear weapons has long been plagued by an “always/never” dilemma. The administrative and technological systems that are necessary to insure that nuclear weapons are always available for use in wartime may be quite different from those necessary to guarantee that such weapons can never be used, without proper authorization, in peacetime. During the nineteen-fifties and sixties, the “always” in American war planning was given far greater precedence than the “never.” Through two terms in office, beginning in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower struggled with this dilemma. He wanted to retain Presidential control of nuclear weapons while defending America and its allies from attack. But, in a crisis, those two goals might prove contradictory, raising all sorts of difficult questions. What if Soviet bombers were en route to the United States but the President somehow couldn’t be reached? What if Soviet tanks were rolling into West Germany but a communications breakdown prevented NATO officers from contacting the White House? What if the President were killed during a surprise attack on Washington, D.C., along with the rest of the nation’s civilian leadership? Who would order a nuclear retaliation then?

With great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed to let American officers use their nuclear weapons, in an emergency, if there were no time or no means to contact the President. Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their nuclear anti-aircraft rockets to shoot down Soviet bombers heading toward the United States. And about half a dozen high-level American commanders were allowed to use far more powerful nuclear weapons, without contacting the White House first, when their forces were under attack and “the urgency of time and circumstances clearly does not permit a specific decision by the President, or other person empowered to act in his stead.” Eisenhower worried that providing that sort of authorization in advance could make it possible for someone to do “something foolish down the chain of command” and start an all-out nuclear war. But the alternative—allowing an attack on the United States to go unanswered or NATO forces to be overrun—seemed a lot worse. Aware that his decision might create public unease about who really controlled America’s nuclear arsenal, Eisenhower insisted that his delegation of Presidential authority be kept secret. At a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he confessed to being “very fearful of having written papers on this matter.”

President John F. Kennedy was surprised to learn, just a few weeks after taking office, about this secret delegation of power. “A subordinate commander faced with a substantial military action,” Kennedy was told in a top-secret memo, “could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative if he could not reach you.” Kennedy and his national-security advisers were shocked not only by the wide latitude given to American officers but also by the loose custody of the roughly three thousand American nuclear weapons stored in Europe. Few of the weapons had locks on them. Anyone who got hold of them could detonate them. And there was little to prevent NATO officers from Turkey, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany from using them without the approval of the United States.

In December, 1960, fifteen members of Congress serving on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy had toured NATO bases to investigate how American nuclear weapons were being deployed. They found that the weapons—some of them about a hundred times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima—were routinely guarded, transported, and handled by foreign military personnel. American control of the weapons was practically nonexistent. Harold Agnew, a Los Alamos physicist who accompanied the group, was especially concerned to see German pilots sitting in German planes that were decorated with Iron Crosses—and carrying American atomic bombs. Agnew, in his own words, “nearly wet his pants” when he realized that a lone American sentry with a rifle was all that prevented someone from taking off in one of those planes and bombing the Soviet Union.

* * *
The Kennedy Administration soon decided to put locking devices inside NATO’s nuclear weapons. The coded electromechanical switches, known as “permissive action links” (PALs), would be placed on the arming lines. The weapons would be inoperable without the proper code—and that code would be shared with NATO allies only when the White House was prepared to fight the Soviets. The American military didn’t like the idea of these coded switches, fearing that mechanical devices installed to improve weapon safety would diminish weapon reliability. A top-secret State Department memo summarized the view of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1961: “all is well with the atomic stockpile program and there is no need for any changes.”

After a crash program to develop the new control technology, during the mid-nineteen-sixties, permissive action links were finally placed inside most of the nuclear weapons deployed by NATO forces. But Kennedy’s directive applied only to the NATO arsenal. For years, the Air Force and the Navy blocked attempts to add coded switches to the weapons solely in their custody. During a national emergency, they argued, the consequences of not receiving the proper code from the White House might be disastrous. And locked weapons might play into the hands of Communist saboteurs. “The very existence of the lock capability,” a top Air Force general claimed, “would create a fail-disable potential for knowledgeable agents to ‘dud’ the entire Minuteman [missile] force.” The Joint Chiefs thought that strict military discipline was the best safeguard against an unauthorized nuclear strike. A two-man rule was instituted to make it more difficult for someone to use a nuclear weapon without permission. And a new screening program, the Human Reliability Program, was created to stop people with emotional, psychological, and substance-abuse problems from gaining access to nuclear weapons.

Despite public assurances that everything was fully under control, in the winter of 1964, while “Dr. Strangelove” was playing in theatres and being condemned as Soviet propaganda, there was nothing to prevent an American bomber crew or missile launch crew from using their weapons against the Soviets. Kubrick had researched the subject for years, consulted experts, and worked closely with a former R.A.F. pilot, Peter George, on the screenplay of the film. George’s novel about the risk of accidental nuclear war, “Red Alert,” was the source for most of “Strangelove” ’s plot. Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a top official at the Department of Defense had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles. At the Pentagon, the book was taken seriously as a cautionary tale about what might go wrong. Even Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara privately worried that an accident, a mistake, or a rogue American officer could start a nuclear war.

Coded switches to prevent the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons were finally added to the control systems of American missiles and bombers in the early nineteen-seventies. The Air Force was not pleased, and considered the new security measures to be an insult, a lack of confidence in its personnel. Although the Air Force now denies this claim, according to more than one source I contacted, the code necessary to launch a missile was set to be the same at every Minuteman site: 00000000.

* * *
The early permissive action links were rudimentary. Placed in NATO weapons during the nineteen-sixties and known as Category A PALs, the switches relied on a split four-digit code, with ten thousand possible combinations. If the United States went to war, two people would be necessary to unlock a nuclear weapon, each of them provided with half the code. Category A PALs were useful mainly to delay unauthorized use, to buy time after a weapon had been taken or to thwart an individual psychotic hoping to cause a large explosion. A skilled technician could open a stolen weapon and unlock it within a few hours. Today’s Category D PALs, installed in the Air Force’s hydrogen bombs, are more sophisticated. They require a six-digit code, with a million possible combinations, and have a limited-try feature that disables a weapon when the wrong code is repeatedly entered.

The Air Force’s land-based Minuteman III missiles and the Navy’s submarine-based Trident II missiles now require an eight-digit code—which is no longer 00000000—in order to be launched. The Minuteman crews receive the code via underground cables or an aboveground radio antenna. Sending the launch code to submarines deep underwater presents a greater challenge. Trident submarines contain two safes. One holds the keys necessary to launch a missile; the other holds the combination to the safe with the keys; and the combination to the safe holding the combination must be transmitted to the sub by very-low-frequency or extremely-low-frequency radio. In a pinch, if Washington, D.C., has been destroyed and the launch code doesn’t arrive, the sub’s crew can open the safes with a blowtorch.

The security measures now used to control America’s nuclear weapons are a vast improvement over those of 1964. But, like all human endeavors, they are inherently flawed. The Department of Defense’s Personnel Reliability Program is supposed to keep people with serious emotional or psychological issues away from nuclear weapons—and yet two of the nation’s top nuclear commanders were recently removed from their posts. Neither appears to be the sort of calm, stable person you want with a finger on the button. In fact, their misbehavior seems straight out of “Strangelove.”

Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, the second-highest-ranking officer at the U.S. Strategic Command—the organization responsible for all of America’s nuclear forces—-was investigated last summer for allegedly using counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa. According to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, “a significant monetary amount” of counterfeit chips was involved. Giardina was relieved of his command on October 3, 2013. A few days later, Major General Michael Carey, the Air Force commander in charge of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, was fired for conduct “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” According to a report by the Inspector General of the Air Force, Carey had consumed too much alcohol during an official trip to Russia, behaved rudely toward Russian officers, spent time with “suspect” young foreign women in Moscow, loudly discussed sensitive information in a public hotel lounge there, and drunkenly pleaded to get onstage and sing with a Beatles cover band at La Cantina, a Mexican restaurant near Red Square. Despite his requests, the band wouldn’t let Carey onstage to sing or to play the guitar.

While drinking beer in the executive lounge at Moscow’s Marriott Aurora during that visit, General Carey made an admission with serious public-policy implications. He off-handedly told a delegation of U.S. national-security officials that his missile-launch officers have the “worst morale in the Air Force.” Recent events suggest that may be true. In the spring of 2013, nineteen launch officers at Minot Air Force base in North Dakota were decertified for violating safety rules and poor discipline. In August, 2013, the entire missile wing at Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana failed its safety inspection. Last week, the Air Force revealed that thirty-four launch officers at Malmstrom had been decertified for cheating on proficiency exams—and that at least three launch officers are being investigated for illegal drug use. The findings of a report by the RAND Corporation, leaked to the A.P., were equally disturbing. The study found that the rates of spousal abuse and court martials among Air Force personnel with nuclear responsibilities are much higher than those among people with other jobs in the Air Force. “We don’t care if things go properly,” a launch officer told RAND. “We just don’t want to get in trouble.”

The most unlikely and absurd plot element in “Strangelove” is the existence of a Soviet “Doomsday Machine.” The device would trigger itself, automatically, if the Soviet Union were attacked with nuclear weapons. It was meant to be the ultimate deterrent, a threat to destroy the world in order to prevent an American nuclear strike. But the failure of the Soviets to tell the United States about the contraption defeats its purpose and, at the end of the film, inadvertently causes a nuclear Armageddon. “The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost,” Dr. Strangelove, the President’s science adviser, explains to the Soviet Ambassador, “if you keep it a secret!”

A decade after the release of “Strangelove,” the Soviet Union began work on the Perimeter system—-a network of sensors and computers that could allow junior military officials to launch missiles without oversight from the Soviet leadership. Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the film. Completed in 1985, the system was known as the Dead Hand. Once it was activated, Perimeter would order the launch of long-range missiles at the United States if it detected nuclear detonations on Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be reached. Like the Doomsday Machine in “Strangelove,” Perimeter was kept secret from the United States; its existence was not revealed until years after the Cold War ended.

In retrospect, Kubrick’s black comedy provided a far more accurate description of the dangers inherent in nuclear command-and-control systems than the ones that the American people got from the White House, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media.

“This is absolute madness, Ambassador,” President Merkin Muffley says in the film, after being told about the Soviets’ automated retaliatory system. “Why should you build such a thing?” Fifty years later, that question remains unanswered, and “Strangelove” seems all the more brilliant, bleak, and terrifyingly on the mark.



___________________________________


AND THIS IS REALLY COOL:
Top secret documents released by the Pentagon:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/primary-sources-permissive-action-links-and-the-threat-of-nuclear-war.html

90分钟世界毁灭

库布里克的《奇爱博士》Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb是冷战讽刺喜剧经典，描写疯狂将军指派轰炸机群干掉苏联，为防止苏联按下“世界末日装置”，美国总统在作战室里闹翻天。

《奇爱博士》的投资180万美元，哥伦比亚公司愿意投资本片的唯一条件是：彼得·塞勒斯必须演四个以上的主要角色。此前，哥伦比亚公司的高层看了库布里克的《一树梨花压海棠》(1962)，见过塞勒斯惊人的演技。塞勒斯在影片拍摄前，原定确实要演四个角色：美国总统、英国军官、奇爱博士和B-52轰炸机机长。但在开拍后，塞勒斯却不愿意演机长这个角色，因为他感觉自己的工作量太大了，而且他也对自己无法掌握机长的德州口音而有些担忧。库布里克说服了塞勒斯，让人录了一卷台词录音带给他。塞勒斯照着录音带背好了台词，但在拍摄现场却因为在狭小的驾驶舱布景里扭伤了脚踝，因此只能放弃这个角色。

奇爱博士的形象来自于美国未来学家赫尔曼·康恩、曼哈顿计划的主管约翰·冯、纽曼、德国导弹之父冯·布劳恩。这个角色后来还被人引申为亨利·基辛格，但其实在1960年代初期他还只是个写了几本关于核战策略书籍的哈佛大学教授而已（但库布里克已经阅读过他的文章了）。奇爱博士古怪的奥地利口音的英语来自于库布里克雇佣的摄影师Weegee，奇爱博士的手套则是塞勒斯问库布里克借的。

由于此时彼得·塞勒斯正在闹离婚，无法离开英国，因此《奇爱博士》全程在伦敦的谢普敦片场拍摄。三个主要摄影棚被用来搭建五角大楼作战室、B-52轰炸机、瑞普将军的办公室等场景。影片的场景设计是大名鼎鼎的肯·亚当，他此后成为了多部007电影的场景设计。作战室的设计是超现实的，从《卡利加里博士的小屋》和《大都会》获得灵感，这个作战室有130英尺长、100英尺宽、35英尺高，环绕的日光灯看上去像是一个蘑菇云环。库布里克坚持要在圆桌上铺满绿色毛毡，虽然这在黑白片里根本看不出来，但他希望让演员有一种在巨大的赌台上表演的感觉。

影片拍摄中，库布里克得知有一部名为《核战爆发令》的影片的剧情与《奇爱博士》相类似，虽然那部影片是超现实惊悚片，但库布里克仍担忧相同题材的影片会毁了《奇爱博士》的票房，尤其是对方的阵容相当尖挺：导演西德尼·吕美特（《十二怒汉》）、主演亨利·方达（《愤怒的葡萄》）。于是，库布里克用出了狠招：起诉。哥伦比亚公司和库布里克对《核战爆发令》提起了诉讼，这让《核战爆发令》的档期被推迟到了《奇爱博士》上映八个月后。

但《奇爱博士》也非常倒霉，1963年11月22日，《奇爱博士》做了首场试映。就在这一天，美国总统约翰·肯尼迪在达拉斯遇刺身亡，影片的档期只能推迟到1964年1月，哥伦比亚公司甚至给一句含有“达拉斯”的台词进行了重新配音，改为“赌城”，另外还有一场讽刺总统的砸派戏被删除。在次年的奥斯卡奖上，《奇爱博士》虽然获得了四项提名，但全部落空，讽刺冷战的杰作《奇爱博士》就此被大时代淹没。

当然，优秀的电影永远不会被遗忘，《奇爱博士》此后慢慢成为了最伟大的反战电影之一，在IMDb的最佳影片250名中排名第28、美国电影学院2000年评选的最伟大喜剧片第3名、美国电影学院2007年的百年百大佳片第39名。


从DVD到蓝光

《奇爱博士》在DVD曾推出过多个版本，值得一提的包括1999年哥伦比亚公司第一版（无花絮）、2001年哥伦比亚公司特别版（携带幕后制作纪录片花絮）、2003年日本二区超码版、2004年40周年特别版（双碟配置）。这几个版本里争议最大的当属40周年特别版，因为此前的版本都是1.33：1全屏格式，而这个版是1.66：1可变宽屏。大家都知道库布里克去世前的除了《2001漫游太空》之外的音像制品都是全屏格式，而今出来的这个宽屏版，画面明显有裁切，但哥伦比亚公司却宣称此片的当年上映比例就是1.66：1的。
 

2009年6月16日，索尼公司发行《奇爱博士》45周年特别版蓝光，将这部经典的画面升级为1080p格式，正片仍是可变宽屏1.66：1。花絮方面，蓝光碟除了将所有的DVD花絮照单全收之外，还增加了一条琐事字幕，全面介绍冷战期间的历史背景以及拍摄内幕。


华纳公司在去年推出了书+碟的蓝光包装后，曾被网友公干为“史上最失败的包装”，索尼公司不知道哪根筋搭错，居然照原样仿制了这个包装，《奇爱博士》就是索尼的第一个试验品。除了碟之外，还附赠一本32页的画册。与40周年特别版DVD随碟附赠的画册内容完全不同（这个版本里有罗杰·伊伯特撰写的影评）。

完整图片版请参见：
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_53867c1d0100entd.html

奇爱博士是谁？美国政府雇用的高级科研人员，负责研发用于冷战的高尖端核武器以及相关的一系列攻击防御系统。一个德裔美国人。一个笼罩在阴影中的瘫子，坐轮椅的。一个右手戴着黑色皮手套行动不正常的人。一个混入美国政府的纳粹余孽。一个被恶魔控制的人。是的，恶魔。正如恰达耶夫不是思想，而是一种精神，被恶魔控制的精神。纳粹，共产党，苏维埃，美国精神，资本主义，爱国主义统统都是恶魔。它们宣扬一种仇恨，弱肉强食，优胜劣汰的仇恨。以崇拜强权的名义宣扬的一种仇恨。它们管这叫爱。爱国，爱领袖云云。所以国家要强大，搞核竞赛，压倒敌人。领袖要造神，万能，完美无缺，字字皆真理。
一个阳痿的自大狂，一个被训练过度的飞行员（核战英雄？牛仔帽暗示什么？），一个在地球表面被核辐射笼罩后，躲在地下矿井里仍要藏起一颗核弹与苏联继续竞赛的美国将军，一个陷入泥潭，无能为力的美国总统，一个研发出毁灭世界的机器的国家政权。影片中，一切荒诞的，可笑的，恐怖的，都是恶魔受到人类崇拜后的产物。
现在冷战结束了，纳粹早完蛋了，苏联也解体了。那么我们是否可以以较为轻松的心情来看这部电影呢？我觉得不大可能。因为影片中表现的一切细节，现在依然成立。

让我来把这部电影讲一遍：
从前，有个男人阳痿了，他不肯承认是自己出了问题，然后觉得这个世界上的水有问题。再觉得所有世界上的女人都有毛病，如果不是你们的性需求，就不会有男人的阳痿。因为精子也是水，所以两个问题联系了起来~他觉得水是因为苏联人故意使坏，于是他去毁灭所有的水、毁灭苏联、毁灭世界。
从前，还有一个残疾男人，从来没有女人喜欢他，于是他一直做梦可以有取之不尽用之不竭的女人，每天除了sex什么也不做。然后世界毁灭了，他很高兴，这样就可以名正言顺躲在煤矿里为了人类的繁殖每天只fuck了~然后他的残疾竟然因此神奇地治愈了~