Stan­ley Kubrick’s black­est-of-black com­e­dy film, Dr Strangelove, was con­ceived as a straight thriller, based on Peter George’s book about the threat of nuclear war, Red Alert. The direc­tor, how­ev­er, increas­ing­ly found him­self struck, dur­ing the writ­ing process, by a per­sis­tent comedic thread that sug­gest­ed itself and which even­tu­al­ly forced him to embrace and run with it. A good thing too…and there could have been no bet­ter way to run with this comedic ele­ment in the fledg­ling movie than to engage Peter Sell­ers’ ser­vices.

Kubrick had worked with Sell­ers on Loli­ta, and it was prob­a­bly Sell­ers’ dis­play of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion in that movie that moti­vat­ed Colum­bia Pic­tures to insist on cast­ing him in Dr Strangelove in mul­ti­ple roles. Sell­ers plays three char­ac­ters: US Pres­i­dent, Merkin Muf­fley; wheel­chair-bound, inge­nious mad Ger­man sci­en­tist, Dr Strangelove; and – the sub­ject of this blog post – British RAF exchange offi­cer, Group Cap­tain Lionel Man­drake.

The por­tray­al of Man­drake is a bril­liant dis­play of under­stat­ed comedic act­ing. The slow­ly-dawn­ing real­i­sa­tion that his com­mand­ing offi­cer, Gen­er­al Rip­per (him­self bril­liant­ly played by Ster­ling Hay­den), has become unhinged and para­noid and has put in motion a seem­ing­ly unstop­pable series of events that will cul­mi­nate in nuclear con­fla­gra­tion; his des­per­a­tion to extract from Rip­per the “recall code” to bring back the nuclear bombers that are swift­ly on their way to Rus­sia; and his fran­tic efforts to con­tact the Pres­i­dent and to avoid nuclear apoc­a­lypse when he finds he might hold the only key to do so…Sellers’ duty-bound and stiff-upper-lipped group cap­tain is a per­for­mance of sheer genius.

There is such a pletho­ra of superbly writ­ten and deliv­ered lines that there are too many to sin­gle out. Take ten min­utes to enjoy them all – as I guar­an­tee you will – in this mon­tage of Man­drake scenes.