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The premonition is a corrida nightmare, who's the bull and who's the matador? "A hard day" in the Cold War, starting with the "political scientist" (Walter Matthau) holding court in a little evocation of L'Année dernière à Marienbad. A monumental snafu under a harsh light, a Strategic Air Command squad mistakenly dispatched for the Soviet Union with a jammed radio and a couple of nuclear warheads, plenty of time for worrying about the bomb. One general is the alarmed dreamer (Dan O'Herlihy) and another (Frank Overton) reminiscences with his Russian counterpart, the colonel (Fritz Weaver) is ready to crack long before any atomic alarm goes off. Hell is the emergency bunker under the White House, just a blank room for the President (Henry Fonda) and the translator (Larry Hagman) and a looming, metallic telephone. "After us, the machines. We're halfway there already." Clammy men in faulty systems, a Sidney Lumet specialty—amid all the mechanisms of anxiety on display, he understands that the camera is the one exerting the most pressure. Burden of the good soldier, a pilot (Edward Binns) reduced to a nervous eyeball barely visible behind bulky aircraft paraphernalia. The world meanwhile is a huge flickering screen, blips appear and vanish on it, "war isn't what it used to be." A high-pitched tone registers Moscow vaporized, the solution to retaliation comes to the President as the shadow from his hand grimly masks his visage. "Remember the story of the sacrifice of Abraham?" East and West impasse, doomsday freeze-frame. Frankenheimer in The Fourth War boils the whole thing down to a snowy fistfight. "All hypotheses, but fun to play around with." Cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld. With William Hansen, Russell Hardie, Russell Collins, Sorrell Booke, Nancy Berg, Hildy Parks, Janet Ward, Dom DeLuise, and Dana Elcar. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |