Fail-Safe (1964)

User Rating:

8.0/10   

Director:

Sidney Lumet

Writers:

Walter Bernstein (screenplay)
Eugene Burdick (novel) ...
(more)

Release Date:

7 October 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

It will have you sitting on the brink of eternity!

Plot:

American planes are sent to deliver a nuclear attack on Moscow, but it's a mistake due to an electrical malfunction. Can all-out war be averted?

Plot Keywords:

Bomber | General | Control | Strategic Air Command | Colonel

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Dan O'Herlihy	...	General Black
Walter Matthau	...	Groeteschele
Frank Overton	...	General Bogan
Edward Binns	...	Colonel Grady
Fritz Weaver	...	Colonel Cascio
Henry Fonda	...	The President
Larry Hagman	...	Buck
William Hansen	...	Secretary Swenson
Russell Hardie	...	General Stark
Russell Collins	...	Knapp
Sorrell Booke	...	Congressman Raskob
Nancy Berg	...	Ilsa Wolfe
John Connell	...	Thomas
Frank Simpson	...	Sullivan
Hildy Parks	...	Betty Black
Janet Ward	...	Mrs. Grady
Dom DeLuise	...	Sgt. Collins
Dana Elcar	...	Foster
Stewart Germain	...	Mr. Cascio
Louise Larabee	...	Mrs. Cascio
Frieda Altman	...	Jennie
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Geri Miller	...	Go-go Dancer (uncredited)
Charles Tyner	...	Jet fighter pilot (voice) (uncredited)

Directed by
Sidney Lumet

Writing credits
Walter Bernstein		(screenplay)
Eugene Burdick		(novel) &
Harvey Wheeler		(novel)
Peter George		uncredited

Produced by
Charles H. Maguire	....	associate producer
Max E. Youngstein	....	producer

Cinematography by
Gerald Hirschfeld

Film Editing by
Ralph Rosenblum

Art Direction by
Albert Brenner

Set Decoration by
J.C. Delaney		(as J.C. DeLaney)

Costume Design by
Anna Hill Johnstone

Makeup Department
Harry Buchman	....	makeup artist

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Harry Falk	....	assistant director (as Harry Falk Jr.)

Sound Department
Jack Fitzstephens	....	sound editor
William Swift	....	sound mixer

Camera and Electrical Department
Howard Fortune	....	chief electrician
Edward Knott	....	chief grip
Albert Taffet	....	camera operator (as Al Taffett)

Other crew
Marguerite James	....	continuity
Eugene Burdick	....	script consultant (uncredited)

Production Companies

• Columbia Pictures Corporation

Distributors

• Columbia Pictures (1964) (USA) (theatrical)
• Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (1966) (USA) (TV) (original airing)
• Columbia Films (1964) (Belgium) (theatrical)
• Columbia Films (1965) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Columbia-Bavaria Filmgesellschaft m.b.H. (1964) (West Germany) (theatrical)
• Columbia TriStar Home Video (2002) (USA) (DVD)
• Columbia TriStar (200?) (Brazil) (DVD)
• GoodTimes Home Video (video)
• Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic (2007) (Finland) (DVD)

Special Effects

• Storyboard Inc.

Other Companies

• F. Hillsberg  titles

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | West Germany:16 | Australia:PG | UK:PG | Finland:K-8 | Sweden:15

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Dana Elcar's first film role.

Goofs:

Continuity: The end credits list General Black's wife as named Betty, but in the film he addresses her as Katie, and in a radio conversation, the President asks Black, "are Kathryn and the kids in New York?"

Quotes:

Defense Secretary Swenson: General Stark, are there any papers or documents in New York which are absolutely essential to the running of the United States? General Stark?
Gen. Stark: No sir. There are important documents, but none of them absolutely essential.
Admiral Wilcox: Will there be any warning given? A lot of lives could be saved if people had a few minutes.
Defense Secretary Swenson: On this short notice, an alert to a big city would do more harm than good. It only produces panic.
Admiral Wilcox: What about this?
[Wilcox tosses a newspaper onto the table, showing the First Lady in NYC, prominently featured on the main page. Swenson sees it, then gives the paper to General Stark]
Gen. Stark: Maybe... maybe he doesn't know his wife is there.
Defense Secretary Swenson: [shaking his head] He knows.
[Groeteschele finishes writing something onto some paper]
Prof. Groeteschele: Gentlemen, we are wasting time.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Twilight Zone: Shatterday/A Little Peace and Quiet (#1.1)" (1985)

" Maybe It IS Hell ... "

It is 1964 and the Cold War is raging. If the US military's Strategic Command spots any unidentified object in the skies, American nuclear bombers are ordered to a series of 'Fail-Safe' points. Unless they receive the stand-down command, the aircraft will head for target cities in the Soviet Union. Once beyond the Fail-Safe Point, and locked onto their targets, the bombers cannot be recalled. Crews are trained to disregard all signals, whether they be commands or entreaties, and continue on their mission. After all, any plea to turn back may be soviet subterfuge. This perverse logic of nuclear warfare, as one pilot puts it, "eliminates the personal factor".

The film conjectures what might happen if the system buckles. Suppose a technical mishap allows a bomber group to stray beyond Fail-Safe. Would the soviets accept the anguished apologies of an American president? Or would they regard it as a treacherous trick? Should human beings place everything they hold dear at the mercy of electronic systems? What if the rationale of nuclear strategy parts company with human logic?

Made less than two years after the Cuba Missile Crisis, "Fail-Safe" is clearly very heavily affected by that trauma and what it revealed to us all. We see a decent American President in the bizarre context of a nuclear showdown. Cut off from the society he knows and understands, the president is locked deep in some claustrophobic bunker, his only real human contact being the 'enemy' soviet premier. The American is wise and morally sound, and equal to the emergency. His Russian counterpart is emotional and unpredictable, but rises above his indoctrination to attain real dignity when the chips are down. Another of the Cold War insanities is played out - these two foes will spend the last hours of life on Planet Earth locked together psychologically, far from their loved ones.

Henry Fonda is first-class as the president. He brings authority and dignity to the part, exuding Ivy League self-assurance. Larry Hagman plays Buck, the translator from Russian into English, who spends the crisis in the bunker at the president's side. A moment's thought would convince any intelligent viewer that huge liberties are being taken with the truth. In reality, the president would have a team of advisers around him throughout (as indeed Kennedy did during October 1962). There would be phalanxes of interpreters listening in, to insure against even the tiniest mistranslation, and whole companies of psychologists to gauge every nuance of the Russian leader's mood. However, for clarity and dramatic power, the film has the president relying solely on the nervous young Buck. Simultaneous translation is a good dramatic device, because it avoids the distraction of subtitles or the absurdity of a Russian leader speaking fluent English.

Walter Matthau, against type, plays a heartless nuclear expert. Professor Groeteschieler advises the Pentagon top brass on nuclear strategy. He is a ruthless cynic who represents the Barry Goldwater end of the spectrum, and Matthau acts the part consummately well.

Sidney Lumet is one of the great directors, and his stylistic signature is apparent all through this fine film. From the very start, our peace of mind is stripped from us. We see a bull dying in the bullring, and the film's title is flashed up almost subliminally. These broken, discordant images place us immediately in a world of troubled dreams where no comfort is to be had. The American pilots look more like robots than men, in their heavy facemasks which amplify their breathing - or is it fear which creates that rasping edge to their inhalations? When the order to proceed beyond Fail-Safe flashes up in the cockpit, the pilots look at it in motionless silence, their very stillness conveying the tragedy in all its emotional power.

In "Twelve Angry Men" Lumet cast Henry Fonda as the voice of America's liberal conscience beset by the darker forces of the human psyche. Part at least of that film's artistic success is attributable to Lumet's skilful use of lenses in order to flatten the image and intensify the claustrophobia of the jury room. Here, the director employs similar visual techniques to heighten the dramatic experience. With his director of photography, Gerald Hirschfield, he employs chiaroscuro lighting and extreme close-up to amplify the tension of the final minutes, and even shoots Fonda through a fish-eye lens to impart a sense of psychological dislocation.

By a process that is itself logical, nuclear confrontation brings us to insane conclusions. Once both sides comprehend what is happening, they co-operate fully, sharing military secrets, as the humans unite against their mortal enemy, The Bomb. General Bogan (Frank Overton), America's Cold Warrior, is distraught when the Russian missiles fail to destroy American aircraft. Finally, we have the absurdity of an American bomber circling over New York, preparing to destroy five million American lives at the president's command. Life must go on, so plans are drawn up to rescue not people, but the commercial records of American companies from the debris of the metropolis.

Colonel Black (Dan O'Herlihy) is the keeper of the liberal flame. By a cruel irony, he becomes Death itself, and his tragedy is the tragedy of progressive thought. The 'hotline', established post-Cuba, is used very effectively in this film. Shot in exaggerated perspective, the phoneset dwarfs the president, symbolising the way in which the technological behemoth has swamped human decency. In a grimly powerful coup de cinema, the president hears his ambassador's phone melting and knows that the worst has happened. "No human being did wrong," says the Russian premier, as disaster darkens the earth. The American leader counters with, "We let our machines get out of hand." And there, in a nutshell, is the moral of the film.