Dr. Strangelove:Dr. Strangelove is Stanley Kubrick’s revolutionary film about the Cold War. It uses humor and irony to raise questions about the values and the premise of the Cold War, as well as the way it was carried out. When the General Jack T. Ripper in the film basically goes insane and orders a mission for all American planes stationed in the vicinity of Russia to attack their Russian targets, he essentially changes the fate of the entire world, since although he had no knowledge of this because the Russians hadn’t yet released this information, detonating even one bomb in Russia would cause the “Doomsday Machine” the Russians built, which was impossible to dismantle, to basically wipe out the entire population of Earth. This was Kubrick’s way of showing how irresponsible it was for the US and Russia to have nuclear weapons pointed at each other when one freak incident could cause something as devastating as the end of the world. The movie also portrays other officials in the war room of the Pentagon trying to stop this mission at all costs, because they learned of the “Doomsday Machine” after calling in the Russian ambassador. However, since the Russian premier was notified and therefore fired at the planes on their way, one plane’s communicating system was damaged, so it didn’t get the message sent out by the Pentagon to cancel the mission and continued on its way. And even though the Russians were informed of the planes primary and secondary targets, since the plane was also losing fuel, it changed its destination and was therefore not taken down. However, the officials convening in the war room were able to come up with a plan to save society. They decided to build an underground fort in which a selected group could live and wait for the toxic nuclear cloud caused by the Doomsday Machine to settle. Another less noticeable, yet still important point in one of the last scenes is when the Russian ambassador subtly sneaks out of the pentagon after hearing this plan, presumably to report back to his home country to do the same, so when everyone reemerges after 90 or so years, the conflict between Russia and America will (again presumably) pick up right where it left off. In this way, Kubrick shows how pointless and consuming the whole conflict is, that even after complete nuclear destruction, people still won’t learn to give up, even when there is almost nothing left to fight for.Vertigo:The film Vertigo, which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and came out in 1958 was an important way of showing the expectations and culture of the time period in American history. Throughout the movie, Hitchcock uses the recurring theme of human urges that can’t be controlled to criticize how culture at that time was so focused on control and courtesy, and it was unnatural for anyone to really be as perfect as society expected. It depicts a police officer, John Ferguson, who develops the mental condition called “vertigo” which causes the sufferer to experience dizziness and anxiety when confronted with heights. Because of this, he is forced to retire and when his friend Mr. Elster asks him to follow his wife Madeleine for him, since he believes that she is possessed by the spirit of her great-grandmother, Ferguson agrees. In following her, he eventually falls in love with her, and when she apparently jumps into the San Francisco Bay, he jumps in and saves her. And when she doesn’t wake up, instead of taking her to a hospital, he takes her to his house instead, and puts her in his bed, with her clothes hanging in his kitchen drying. This is one example of a character’s slip-up in manners showing how he or she can’t control himself. After this, Ferguson and Madeleine get to know each other and eventually fall in love. And one day, Madeleine comes to him and tells him about a dream she had that she was in a stable, and since she described it perfectly, Ferguson figures out what the place was and takes her there, since he does not believe that she is possessed, but rather that she has forgotten she has been there before. Once they are there, she still doesn’t believe that she has been there before and all of sudden says that there is a final thing she must do, and runs off into a church tower, and runs to the top. Ferguson follows her, but because of his condition, he cannot make it all the way, and he sees her run out to the top landing, hears a scream, and then sees her fall through the window. After her death, he is driven mad and cannot stop thinking about her, so when he sees a woman that looks almost identical to her, he follows her to the hotel she’s staying in and convinces her to go out to dinner with him. What he eventually figures out is that the woman he fell in love with was actually a look-alike of his Elster’s wife, who was the one he saw fall off the tower and die, and the entire affair has been an elaborate plot conceived by Elster to murder his wife without being accused by creating a witness to her “suicide.” This is also a criticism of the time period’s fakeness because it depicts someone so representative of the ideal of the time period in such a negative way. In the very last scene, Ferguson and the look-alike, whose actual name is Judy, are at the top of the tower where Elster killed his wife, when a nun appears in the shadows and Judy, presumable thinking it is a ghost is so frightened that she falls off the tower.
