OCTOBER 1962The Cuban Missile Crisis

16–28 OCTOBER 1962Thirteen days. A world on the brink.

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Watch with context

The crisis
on screen.

Documentaries can introduce witnesses and evidence. Dramas can make decisions feel immediate. Both benefit from being watched alongside the historical record.

Where to begin

For the three leaders, start with Three Men Go to War. For a participant’s later reflections, try The Fog of War. For a dramatic introduction, use Thirteen Days alongside the timeline.

Links below lead to broadcaster, distributor or catalogue records. Check each provider for current UK viewing options; availability and access conditions change.

Documentaries

2012

Documentary

Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Men Go to War

Public-broadcast documentary

A useful starting point for seeing Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro within the same crisis.

The programme follows the three leaders and the pressures surrounding their decisions. Its wider perspective helps counter the tendency to tell the whole story from the White House alone.

Watch with the record in mind

use it as an introduction, then compare the treatment of Cuba with the documents and Cuban perspective on this site.

Open the official or catalogue record ↗

[1]
2012

Documentary

The Man Who Saved the World

PBS Secrets of the Dead

A documentary with dramatic reconstructions about Arkhipov and the Soviet submarine B-59.

The episode combines testimony, commentary and reconstructed submarine scenes to explain the danger beneath the Atlantic on 27 October. Its subject is Vasily Arkhipov in 1962.

Watch with the record in mind

reconstructed dialogue is not a transcript. Compare the dramatic account with the later documentary research on B-59; the weapon was a nuclear torpedo, not a missile. Do not confuse this episode with similarly titled works about other nuclear incidents.

Open the official or catalogue record ↗

[2] [3]
2003

Documentary

The Fog of War

Directed by Errol Morris · featuring Robert McNamara

McNamara’s retrospective account connects the crisis with wider questions about judgement, uncertainty and war.

The film ranges beyond Cuba to the Second World War and Vietnam. The Cuban material is valuable because McNamara participated in the decisions, while the interview format makes his later interpretation part of the subject.

Watch with the record in mind

a participant remembering events decades later is a source to examine, not a substitute for the contemporary record. Compare his recollections with ExComm documents.

Open the official or catalogue record ↗

[4]

Historical dramas

2000

Historical drama

Thirteen Days

Directed by Roger Donaldson · Bruce Greenwood, Steven Culp and Kevin Costner

A feature-film dramatisation of the Kennedy administration’s response to the missile discovery.

The film makes the competing advice, military pressure and urgency of the White House deliberations accessible. It is an effective companion to the day-by-day chronology, provided its dramatic perspective remains clear.

Watch with the record in mind

characters, conversations and emphasis serve a screenplay. Do not treat a scene as proof that a meeting or exchange happened exactly that way. The film’s White House focus also leaves room for the Cuban, Soviet and British accounts.

Open the official or catalogue record ↗

[5] [6]
1974

Historical drama

The Missiles of October

Directed by Anthony Page · William Devane and Martin Sheen

An earlier television docudrama, first broadcast by ABC on 18 December 1974.

Devane plays John Kennedy and Sheen plays Robert Kennedy. The cast also includes the Soviet leadership, American advisers and David Ormsby-Gore, making it interesting to compare with later screen accounts.

Watch with the record in mind

it was made before many later Soviet records and revelations became available. Read it both as a dramatisation of 1962 and as an example of how the crisis was understood in the 1970s.

Open the official or catalogue record ↗

[7]

Cold War fiction

1964

Cold War fiction

Dr. Strangelove

Directed by Stanley Kubrick · featuring Peter Sellers

A fictional nuclear-war satire for understanding the anxieties of the period, rather than the events in Cuba.

The film explores failures of control, deterrence and communication through an invented crisis. It belongs in a wider Cold War viewing list, alongside factual work on the military systems and political decisions of 1962.

Watch with the record in mind

this is not a dramatisation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Its characters, plot and fictional mechanisms must not be carried into the historical timeline as facts.

Open the official or catalogue record ↗

[8]
Sources for this page8

Numbers refer to the passages above. Open a title to read the source, or use a return link to go back to its citation.

  1. WABE / public broadcasting: Three Men Go to War, 2012↩ Back to text
  2. PBS Secrets of the Dead: The Man Who Saved the World↩ Back to text
  3. National Security Archive: The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis at 60↩ Back to text
  4. Sony Pictures: The Fog of War↩ Back to text
  5. BFI catalogue: Thirteen Days (2000)↩ Back to text
  6. PBS NewsHour: discussion of Thirteen Days and historical interpretation↩ Back to text
  7. Paley Center collection: The Missiles of October, broadcast 18 December 1974↩ Back to text
  8. Library of Congress catalogue: Dr. Strangelove (1964)↩ Back to text
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