The movie with the finest ending: Failsafe (1964) with Nathan & Lee from The UnCover Up

Tune in to this  special holiday movie marathon episode of the My Nuclear Life podcast! Today, host Shelly Lesher welcomes on returning guests Nathan Radley and Lee Cullen, from The UnCover Up podcast. Hopefully you joined us for our previous episode, in which we discussed a vast array of nuclear movies and decided to analyze one movie each. Today we’re analyzing Failsafe with some comparison to Dr. Strangelove.

Before discussing the film Failsafe, Nathan elaborates on a concept crucial to understanding the Cold War: equilibrium. When the balance between America and the Soviet Union was jostled, the danger of nuclear annihilation was most prevalent. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet, is based on a novel of the same name and is very dialogue heavy. He explains the plot, then speculates who would win in a war between the file clerks and prisoners in the film. While these kinds of detached calculations made here and in the film may seem exaggerated, this is really the essence of Cold War game theory. With the Russians, it wasn’t a question of whether to attack, but rather when. The main thesis of the film, a strong thread through every scene, is the danger of handing over human decision making to calculation. Henry Fonda plays the main character in the film, the American President. He is the kind of fictional president you want in a fictional crisis.

There are a lot of comparisons between Failsafe and Dr. Strangelove. When the pilots in failsafe are given orders, they simply pull out their vests and perform the order. In Dr. Strangelove, however, it’s very procedural and professional. Given the many comparisons between the two films, Lee sets up the disaster in Dr. Strangelove, released in 1964 and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film is essentially about all of the upper echelons of decision making and game theory strategy. By contrast, Failsafe is about the soldiers on the ground and how they’re dealing with the circumstances. Lee argues that the plot of the film is the thesis behind a Soviet misinformation campaign which began in 1956. 

Shifting back to Failsafe, Nathan touches on the plot point in which the American President is forced to contact the Soviet Union. While they both share the same interest to prevent the destruction of Moscow, you can imagine the tension involved in the collaboration. As a result, they’re unable to stop the bomber and the destruction is seen over the telephone. Even though everybody knows it was an accident, they also know the equilibrium must be maintained or else it will turn into something even worse. The ending of the film points out that the internal structure that causes the decision to make sense actually makes no sense, the story of the Cold War. 

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Production costs for this episode were provided through National Science Foundation Grant PHY-2011267.