Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: Or,
How I Learned To Stop Worrying, and Love the Bomb (UK,
1964)
Mise-en-Scène
| Movement |
Historical
Background
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. For more information about the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, about flouridation and the Red Scare, or about the fear mongering of the McCarthy era--check out this site.
MISE-EN-SCÈNE/PHOTOGRAPHY. A sample mise-en-scène analysis of a frame from a scene in the War Room (analysis based on the example in Giannetti's Understanding Movies, 9th edition).
Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb (UK, Kubrick, 1964). A mise-en-scène analysis using
the terms in Giannetti pp. 90-91.
(1)
Dominant. Where is our eye attracted first? To the
shape of the circle. Why? It's the "line" that is lit in a generally
dark space. We understand this to be the "War Room" of the Pentagon, the
circle of Pentagon brass, civilian and military, advising the President of the
United States on weighty matters of war. Here they are joined to solve the
problem of Ripper's having sent the B-52 bombers on an unauthorized mission to
drop their nuclear bombs on Russian targets.
(2) Lighting
key. High key? Low key? High
contrast? Some combination of these? The lighting in this frame is
high contrast--evoking the stark, tense atmosphere in the
room.
(3) Shot and camera proxemics. What type
of shot? How far away is the camera from the action? This is a long
shot; the camera is far away from the subjects.
(4)
Angle. Are we (and the camera) looking up or down on the subject?
Or is the camera neutral (eye level)? This is an extremely high angle
shot. The camera is positioned very high in the shooting area, and looks
down on the tiny men sitting around the War Room table deciding the fate of the
earth. It's a God's eye view (if it were more directly overhead, we'd call
it a "bird's eye" view).
(5) Color values. The
film is shot in black and white.
(6)
Lens/filter/stock. How do these distort or comment on the
photographed materials? There appears to be no distortion--the effect is
given by lighting and shaping of the objects, not by lens, stock, or
filter--though the overall darkness suggests a faster than normal stock (or film
speed), a stock associated also with documentary films (a style exploited in
this film--to suggest the reality-based nature of the scenario, and the
"newsworthiness" of the events).
(7) Subsidiary
contrasts. What are the main eye-stops after taking in the
dominant? The eye moves from the general circle shape (given by the light)
to the two black diagonals on the left and right side of the table cutting into
the round table and leading out from it. The eyes settle on the lighted
papers on the round table to the dimly light tiny faces dotting the edges, then
back into the black of the circle's center, and then to the black
diagonals.
(8) Density. How much visual
information is packed into the image? Is the texture stark, moderate, or
highly detailed? There's very little visual information here--the majority
of the image is blackened out, and the lit parts provide only hints of men and
their papers sitting in a large circle in that darkened
room.
(9) Composition. How is the
two-dimensional space segmented and organized? What is the underlying
design? This is a balanced composition, divided into three areas (dark
center, lit periphery, and dark background surrounding the men), using a
centered oval shape with dotted outline and two dark slants on either side to
add interest. The underlying design suggests deliberation, balance,
wholeness. The dark slashes on either side threaten the wholeness of the
oval shape, but are otherwise balanced.
(10)
Form. Open or closed? Does the image suggest a window that
arbitrarily isolates a fragment of the scene? Or a proscenium arch, in
which the visual elements are carefully arranged and held in balance? This
is a closed-form image suggesting the Pentagon's self-sufficient universe
enclosing all needed info. The bodies falling off into the bottom of the
frame suggest vaguely the possibility of losing control over that
universe.
(11) Framing. Tight or
loose? Do the characters have no room to move around, or can they move
freely without impediments? The framing is tight, in that the characters
are "boxed" (or "circled") in between the table and the frame. There are a
few figures who fall out of the bottom of the frame, suggesting some
instability.
(12) Depth. On how many
planes is the image composed? Does the background or foreground comment
in any way on the midground? There is a small distance between noticeable
planes--heads, tables, floor. The background is black and the foreground
is transparent, suggesting a small space in which to
maneuver.
(13) Character placement. What
part of the framed space do the characters occupy? Center?
Top? Bottom? Edges? Why? The characters occupy almost all of
the lit circle--and apparently none of the black space. This placement of
all the men in the lighted oval, even in this bleak and darkened room, is
somehow comforting. There are two figures, at the bottom left who are
shadowed (they seem therefore threatening).
(14)
Staging positions. Which way do the characters look vis-à-vis the
camera? The actors in this scene take all positions, depending on where
they are sitting at the table. At the bottom of the frame, all but two of
the characters have fallen out--so we don't see many characters with their backs
to the camera. But then, the room is so dimly lit and the subjects so far
away from the camera that it's hard to tell where their bodies
are.
(15) Character proxemics. How much
space is there between characters? The characters are in all proxemic
relations to each other--intimate, almost touching the person next to them
around the table, and distant--in a public relation to those at the farthest end
from them around the table.
General Jack D. Ripper:
A Rant on a Communist Conspiracy (audio: wav file)*
Note how Kubrick has used light to focus entirely on the face, the cigar and smoke, and the medals on Ripper's uniform. The dominant is the face (particularly the eyes and mouth), with secondary interest in the cigar (and its smoke); in the corner of our eyes we might catch the medals, badges of honor "in war" no doubt. Everything else is blackened out. It's a close-up, with the shot running to extreme close-up. Ripper is literally in our face. We can't get away as he slashes away at our assumptions that our military leaders and the military system they manage are ruled by rationality and that the military profession is ruled by the desire for peace (or as the signs at the Burpleson Air Force Base pronounce, "Peace Is Out Profession!"). Ripper's eyes, his mouth, the smoke reeking from his mouth and around his face--as though he were a monster from hell--all are images that threaten, threatening our security, our sanity, our life itself. The cigar perches there in his mouth like a bomb ready to explode. We follow the movement of the smoke, and we see his face nod up and down, as though trying desperately to convince us (and himself), that there is a dangerous Communist Conspiracy to overthrow everything that we value and that he is our righteous avenger, leading us in a war to utterly destroy this Communist (Russkie) evil and make us, and our bodily fluids, "pure" once again. The Cold War is over, he warns--it looks like it's going to be a "shooting war" now.
*NOTE: The image above is an animated gif file version of part of the shot in Dr. Strangelove, and as such has distorted the original movement of Ripper in Kubrick's film; if you compare them, you'll see that in Kubrick's film, Ripper's movement is slower and more deliberate, and not so mechanically timed in the film version. Animated gif files mechanize and regularize movements, and so you see a small piece clipped from the shot, repeated again and again in mechanical tempo--instant reruns ad infinitum; not so in the original film version.
Created 20 August 1999. Revised 14 January 2008.
Gloria Floren, Letters Department, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive, Oceanside, California 92056.
Contents Copyright 1999-2008 Gloria L. Floren. All rights reserved. U.S.A. e-mail film101@miracosta.edu
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