Reading 'Dr. Strangelove'

Before discussing Kubrick's 1963 'nuclear comedy' Dr. Strangelove (1964), which will be the main focus of this article, we should remind ourselves from the outset how much visual attention, preparation and intellectual effort goes into the work of 'reading' film texts in general. As teachers and students of cinema, we need to be continually sharpening our perceptual skills to take in and then decode the complex interrelated mass of visual and auditory cues that make up a full-length feature film like Dr. Strangelove