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.