
financial support for all his endeavors.
Kubrick's films are characterized by a formal visual style and meticulous attention to detail.
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.
One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.
There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.
I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style.
Include utter banalities.
financial support for all his endeavors.
Kubrick's films are characterized by a formal visual style and meticulous attention to detail. His later films often have elements of surrealism and expressionism and often lack structured linear narrative. His films are frequently described as slow and methodical, and are often perceived as a reflection of his obsessive and perfectionist nature. He worked in a wide variety of genres: science-fiction, horror, period piece and war film. However, there are recurring themes in all his works, notably man's inhumanity to man. While often viewed as expressing an ironic
pessimism
, some critics feel his films contain a cautious optimism when viewed more carefully.
The film that first brought him attention from many critics was Paths of Glory
, the first of three films of his about the dehumanizing effects of war. Many of Kubrick's movies initially met with lukewarm reception, only to be acclaimed years later as masterpieces that had a seminal influence on later generations of filmmakers. Considered groundbreaking was 2001: A Space Odyssey
, noted for being one of the most scientifically realistic and visually innovative science-fiction films ever made while also maintaining an enigmatic non-linear storyline. He voluntarily withdrew his film A Clockwork Orange
from Great Britain, after it was accused of inspiring copycat crimes which in turn resulted in threats against Kubrick's family. Authors Anthony Burgess (eventually) and Stephen King (immediately) were unhappy with Kubrick's adaptations of their novels A Clockwork Orange
and The Shining
respectively; both authors became involved with subsequent stage or TV adaptations. His films were largely successful at the box office, although Barry Lyndon
performed poorly in the United States. All of Kubrick's films from the mid-1950s onward, except The Shining
, were nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, or BAFTAs. Although he was nominated for an Academy Award as a screenwriter and director on several occasions, his only personal win was for the special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Even though all his films, apart from the first two, were adapted from novels or short stories, his works have been described by Jason Ankeny and others as "original and visionary". Although some critics, notably Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, frequently disparaged Kubrick's work, Ankeny describes Kubrick as one of the most "universally acclaimed and influential directors of the postwar era" with a "standing unique among the filmmakers of his day."
Background
Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928, at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, New York, the first of two children born to Jewish parents, Jacques (Jacob) Leonard Kubrick (1901–85) and his wife Sadie Gertrude (née Perveler; 1903–85). His sister, Barbara Mary Kubrick, was born in 1934. Jacques Kubrick, whose parents and paternal grandparents were Jewish of Austrian, Romania
n and Polish origin, was a doctor. At Stanley's birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in The Bronx
.
Kubrick biographer Geoffrey Cocks writes that although Kubrick descended from Eastern European Jews, and was raised in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City, his family was not religious, although his parents had been married in a Jewish ceremony. When critic Michel Ciment
asked him in 1980 whether he had a religious upbringing, Kubrick replied "No, not at all." He had no bar mitzvah and apparently did not attend synagogue, although after his death, both his daughter and wife stated that "He did not deny his Jewishness, not at all." His daughter noted that he wanted to make a film about the Holocaust, to have been called Aryan Papers, and spent years researching the subject. Most of his friends and early photography and film collaborators were Jewish, and his first two marriages were to daughters of recent Jewish immigrants from Europe. British screenwriter Frederic Raphael
, who worked closely with him in his final years, believes that the originality of Kubrick's films was partly because he "had a (Jewish?) respect for scholars," noting that it was "absurd to try to understand Stanley Kubrick without reckoning on Jewishness as a fundamental aspect of his mentality." He points out, nonetheless, that when Kubrick died, "few of the obituaries mentioned that he was a Jew."
A friend of Kubrick's family notes that although his father was a prominent doctor, "Stanley and his mom were such regular people. They had no airs about them. . . . His mother was so down-to-earth, she was lovely." As a boy, he was considered "bookish" and generally uninterested in activities in his Bronx neighborhood. According to a friend, "When we were teenagers hanging around the Bronx, he was just another bright, neurotic, talented guy—just another guy trying to get into a game with my softball club and mess around with girls . . ." Many of his friends from his "close-knit neighborhood" would become involved with his early films, including writing music scores and scripts.
Adolescence
Kubrick's father taught him chessat age twelve, and the game remained a lifelong obsession. Kubrick later recalled the significance of his chess hobby to his career: "I used to play chess twelve hours a day. You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas." He also bought his son a Graflex
camera when he was thirteen, triggering a fascination with still photography
. As a teenager, Kubrick was interested in jazz
, and briefly attempted a career as a drummer. His father was disappointed in his failure to achieve excellence in school, which he felt Stanley was capable of. His father encouraged him to read from his large library at home while at the same time permitting him to take up photography as a serious hobby. These additional interests outside of school may have contributed to his poor performance as a student.
Kubrick attended William Howard Taft High School
from 1941 to 45. He was a poor student, with a meager 67 grade average. According to his English teacher, Kubrick was not a great student, and school didn't interest him. However, "the idea of literature and the reading of literature, from a non-academic, from a more human point of view, clearly was what interested him. He was a literary guy even as a young man . . . " Kubrick also had a poor attendance record, and often skipped school to take in double-feature films. He graduated in 1945, but his poor grades, combined with the demand for college admissions from soldiers returning from the Second World War, eliminated any hopes of higher education. Later in life, Kubrick spoke disdainfully of his education and of education in general, maintaining that nothing about school interested him. His parents sent him to live with relatives for a year in Los Angeles in the hopes that it would help his academic growth.

(CCNY) and then left. Eventually, he sought jobs as a freelance photographer, and by graduation, he had sold a photographic series to Look
magazine. Kubrick supplemented his income by playing chess "for quarters" in Washington Square Park
and various Manhattan
chess clubs. He became an apprentice photographer for Look in 1946, and later a full-time staff photographer. (Many early [1945–50] photographs by Kubrick have been published in the book Drama and Shadows [2005, Phaidon Press] and also appear as a special feature on the 2007 Special Edition DVD of 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
During his Look magazine years, Kubrick married Toba Metz (b. January 24, 1930) on May 29, 1948. They lived together in Greenwich Village
. During this time, Kubrick began frequenting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art
and the cinemas of New York City. He was inspired by the complex, fluid camerawork of director Max Ophüls
, whose films influenced Kubrick's later visual style, and by director Elia Kazan
, who he described as America's "best director" at that time, with his ability of "performing miracles" with his actors.
Early work
In 1951, Kubrick's friend Alex Singer persuaded him to start making short documentaries for The March of Time, a provider of newsreels to movie theatres. Kubrick agreed, and shot the independently financed Day of the Fightin 1951. The film notably employed a reverse tracking shot
, which would become one of Kubrick's signature camera movements. Kubrick is said to have sold Day of the Fight to RKO Radio Pictures for a profit of $100, although Kubrick himself claimed he lost $100. Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at Look magazine and began working on his second short documentary, Flying Padre
(1951), funded by RKO. A third short film, The Seafarers
(1953) was filmed just after his first feature Fear and Desire to recoup costs. It was a 30-minute promotional film for the Seafarers' International Union and was Kubrick's first color film. These three films constitute Kubrick's only surviving work in the documentary genre, although it is believed that he was involved in other shorts which have been lost—most notably World Assembly of Youth
(1952). He also served as second unit director on an episode of the Omnibus television program about the life of Abraham Lincoln
. None of these shorts have been officially released, though they have been widely bootlegged and clips are used in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
.
Fear and Desire
Kubrick moved to narrative feature films with Fear and Desire(1953), the story of a team of soldiers caught behind enemy lines in a fictional war. Kubrick and his then-wife, Toba Metz, were the only crew on the film, which was written by Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler
. Fear and Desire garnered respectable reviews but was a commercial failure. Later in life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, which he dismissed as an amateur effort. He refused to allow Fear and Desire to be shown at retrospectives and public screenings and did everything possible to keep it out of circulation. At least one copy remained in the archives of the film printing company, and the film subsequently surfaced in bootleg copies.
Killer's Kiss
Kubrick's marriage to Toba Metz ended during the making of Fear and Desire. He met his second wife, Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer Ruth Sobotka, in 1952. They lived together in New York's East Village from 1952 until their marriage on January 15, 1955. They moved to Hollywood that summer. Sobotka, who made a cameo appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss
(1955), also served as art director on The Killing (1956). Like Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss is a short feature film, with a running time of slightly more than an hour. A film noir
about a young heavyweight boxer at the end of his career, it met with limited commercial and critical success.. Both Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends.
The Killing
Alex Singer introduced Kubrick to a young producer named James B. Harris, and the two became close friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, would finance three out of the next four Kubrick pictures. The two bought the rights to the Lionel White
novel Clean Break, which Kubrick and co-screenwriter Jim Thompson
turned into The Killing, which tells the story of a meticulously planned racetrack robbery gone wrong. Starring Sterling Hayden
, The Killing was Kubrick's first full-length feature film shot with a professional cast and crew. The story is told using a non-linear narrative, an unusual device for 1950s American cinema, and was imitated nearly 40 years later in the film Reservoir Dogs
. Director Quentin Tarantino
acknowledged Kubrick's film as a major influence, even referring to Reservoir Dogs as "my Killing". The Killing followed many of the conventions of film noir, in both its plotting and cinematography style. The genre peaked in the 1940s, but many critics regard this film as one of its best.
While it was not a financial success, it received good reviews.

. The studio offered them its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next project. During this time, Kubrick also collaborated with Calder Willingham
on an adaptation of the Austrian novel The Burning Secret. Although Kubrick was enthusiastic about the project, it was eventually shelved.
Paths of Glory
Kubrick's next film Paths of Glorywas set during World War I
and based on Humphrey Cobb
's 1935 antiwar novel of the same name. It follows a French army unit ordered on an impossible mission by their superiors. As a result of the mission's failure, three innocent soldiers are unduly charged with cowardice and sentenced to death. Kirk Douglas
starred, and was instrumental in securing financing for the production. The film was not a significant commercial success, but it was critically acclaimed and widely admired within the industry, establishing Kubrick as a major up-and-coming young filmmaker. Critics have praised the film's unsentimental, spare, and unvarnished combat scenes and its raw, black-and-white cinematography. Spielberg
has named this one of his favorite Kubrick films.
During the production of Paths of Glory in Munich
, Kubrick met and romanced young German actress Christiane Harlan, who played a small role in the film. Kubrick divorced Sobotka in 1957, and married Harlan in 1958. They remained together until his death in 1999.
1960s
Upon his return to the United States, Kubrick worked for six months on the Marlon Brandovehicle One-Eyed Jacks
(1961). The two clashed over a number of casting decisions, and Brando eventually fired him and decided to direct the picture himself. Kubrick worked on a number of unproduced screenplays, including Lunatic at Large, which Kubrick intended to develop into a movie, until Kirk Douglas
asked him to take over Douglas' epic production Spartacus (1960) from Anthony Mann
, who had been fired by the studio two weeks into shooting.
Spartacus
Based upon the true story of a doomed uprising of Roman slaves, Spartacus was a difficult production. Creative differences arose between Kubrick and Douglas, and the two reportedly had a stormy working relationship. Spartacus is the only Kubrick film in which the director had no hand in the screenplay, no final cut, no producing credit, or any say in casting. Frustrated by his lack of creative control, Kubrick later largely disowned the film, which further angered Douglas. The friendship the two men had formed on Paths of Glory was destroyed by the experience of making Spartacus. Years later, Douglas referred to Kubrick as "a talented shit." Despite the on-set troubles, Spartacus was a critical and commercial success and established Kubrick as a major director. It won four Oscars including an award for Peter Ustinovfor his turn as the slave dealer Batiatus, the only actor to win one under Kubrick's direction. But the film's embattled production convinced Kubrick to find ways of working with Hollywood financing while remaining independent of its production system, which he called "film by fiat, film by frenzy."
Lolita
In 1962, Kubrick moved to England to film Lolita, and would live there for the rest of his life. His original motivation was to film Lolita in a country with laxer censorship laws. Kubrick had to remain in England to film Dr. Strangelove since divorce proceedings prevented Peter Sellers from leaving the country, and the filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey required the Shepperton Studios
sound stages for their large capacity, the likes of which was unavailable in America. It was after filming the first two of these films in England and in the early planning stages of 2001 that Kubrick decided to settle there permanently.
Lolita was Kubrick's first film to generate major controversy, as it adapted a highly controversial book
, by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov
(already notorious as an "obscene" novel and a cause célèbre
, given its theme) about an affair between a middle-aged professor named Humbert Humbert (James Mason
) and his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. The difficult subject matter was referenced in the film's famous tagline
, "How did they ever make a film of Lolita?"
Prior to its release, Kubrick realized that to get a Production Code
seal, the screenplay would have to downplay the book's provocativeness by treading lightly with its theme. Kubrick tried to make some elements more acceptable by omitting all material referring to Humbert's lifelong infatuation with "nymphets" and possibly ensuring Lolita looked like a teenager. James Harris, Kubrick's co-producer and uncredited co-screenwriter of Lolita decided with Kubrick to raise Lolita's age. Nonetheless, Kubrick had liaised with the censors during production and it was only "slightly edited", in particular removing the eroticism between Lolita and Humbert. As a result, the novel's more sensual aspects were toned down in the final cut, leaving much to the viewer's imagination. Kubrick would later say that had he known the severity of the censorship he would face, he probably would not have made the film.
Kubrick originally engaged Nabokov to adapt his own novel for the screen. The writer first produced a screenplay 400 pages long, which he then reduced to 200. Nabokov estimated that only 20% of his work made it into the final screenplay written by Kubrick. One of Kubrick's most notable changes from the book was to expand the character of Clare Quilty, played by Peter Sellers
. Kubrick had the character of Quilty masquerade as various people, enabling Sellers to employ multiple accents, a talent Kubrick would employ again in Dr Strangelove in which Sellers played three separate roles.
Critical reception of the film was mixed; many praised it for its daring subject matter, while others were surprised by the lack of intimacy between Lolita and Humbert. Andrew Sarris panned it in The Village Voice for being miscast and too restrained; it was also poorly reviewed in London's The Observer and by Eric Rhode on BBC Television News. The film was highly praised by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, though she later became one of Kubrick's harshest critics. Recent reviews of the film in conjunction with its DVD release have been overwhelmingly positive. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay
, and Sue Lyon
, who played the title role, won a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer. Film critic Gene Youngblood
holds that stylistically, Lolita is a transitional film for Kubrick, "marking the turning point from a naturalistic cinema...to the surrealism of the later films."
Dr. Strangelove
Kubrick's next project, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), became a cult film, especially famous for its anti-war message, and is now considered a classic. It is a satire on the hawkish American advocates of use of the atomic bomb, as embodied in the character of renegade General Jack D. Ripper, who leads an unauthorized nuclear attack on Russia. The film prefigured the antiwar sentiments which would become explosive only a few years after its release. Roger Ebert
called it the best satirical film ever made. The screenplay—based upon the novel Red Alert, by ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter George (writing as Peter Bryant)—was co-written by Kubrick and George, with contributions by American satirist Terry Southern
. Red Alert is a serious, cautionary tale of accidental atomic war. However, Kubrick found the conditions leading to nuclear conflict so absurd that the story became a sinister, macabre comedy. Once re-conceived, Kubrick recruited Terry Southern to polish the final screenplay.
Peter Sellers
, who had played a pivotal part in Lolita and had appeared in several previous films in multiple roles, was hired to play four roles in Dr. Strangelove. He eventually played three, due to an injured leg and his difficulty in mastering bomber pilot Major "King" Kong's Texas accent. Due to Sellers' relative obscurity in the US at the time, most American viewers did not initially realize he was playing three roles, all with very different accents and appearances. Kubrick later called Sellers "amazing", but lamented the fact that the actor's manic energy rarely lasted beyond two or three takes. Kubrick ran two cameras simultaneously and allowed Sellers to improvise. Strangelove earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director) and the New York Film Critics' Best Director award.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Kubrick spent five years developing his next film, 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968). The film was conceived as a Cinerama
spectacle and was photographed in Super Panavision 70
. The $10,000,000 (U.S.) film was a massive production for its time. It is famous for its groundbreaking visual effects, minimal use of dialogue and its use of classical music instead of an original score. It was also noted for its scientific realism in depicting space flight as well as its slightly surreal and enigmatic narrative. The former was achieved through extensive consultation with NASA personnel who also helped design the look and feel of the spacecraft. Kubrick also used music by contemporary avant-garde Hungarian composer György Ligeti; it was the first wide commercial exposure of Ligeti's work. Although not initially a critical and commercial success, the film became quickly popular with the counter-culture youth movement of the 1960s, who were especially enchanted by the "psychedelic" and mysterious nature of the film's closing sequence of astronaut David Bowman's journey through the "Stargate". The film's ambiguous ending continues to fascinate contemporary audiences and critics. After this film, Kubrick would never experiment so radically with special effects or narrative form; however, his subsequent films would still maintain some level of ambiguity.
Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke
, expanding on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel
". The visual effects were overseen by Kubrick and engineered by a team that included a young Douglas Trumbull
, who would become famous in his own right as an effects technician. Kubrick extensively used traveling matte
photography to film space flight, a technique also used nine years later by George Lucas
in making Star Wars
, although that film also used motion-control effects unavailable to Kubrick at the time. Kubrick made innovative use of slit-scan photography
to film the Stargate sequence. The film also featured the most extensive use of front-screen projection
to date in the Dawn of Man sequence, for which Kubrick designed a special high-resolution front-screen projector.
The film opened in widescreen Cinerama
and initially toured as a "roadshow" picture, with program booklets sold in the lobbies of the theatre. Although it eventually became an enormous success, the film was not an immediate hit. Initial criticism attacked the film's lack of dialogue, slow pacing, and seemingly impenetrable storyline. One of the film's few defenders was Penelope Gilliatt
, who called it (in The New Yorker
) "some kind of a great film". However, word-of-mouth among young audiences (especially the 1960s counterculture
audience) made the film an eventual hit. Despite nominations in the directing, writing, and producing categories, the only Academy Award
Kubrick received was for supervising the film's special effects.
In spite of initial negative critical reaction, many today consider it among the greatest science fiction film
s ever made, as well as one of the most influential. Steven Spielberg called it his generation's "big bang". It is a staple on All Time Top 10 lists.
A Clockwork Orange
After 2001, Kubrick initially attempted to make a film about the life of Napoleon. When financing fell through, Kubrick searched for a project that he could film quickly on a small budget. He settled on A Clockwork Orange(1971). His adaptation of Anthony Burgess
' novel of the same name
is an exploration of violence in human society. It takes place in a futuristic Great Britain that is both authoritarian and chaotic, and stars Malcolm McDowell
as Alex De Large, a hooligan who gleefully beats, robs, and rapes without remorse. After landing in prison, Alex undergoes an experimental medical aversion treatment, known as the Ludovico technique
, that inhibits his violent tendencies, though he has no real free moral choice. The movie hints that the promotion of the treatment is politically motivated, and Alex becomes a pawn in a political game. Kubrick's vision makes comparisons between the left and right ends of the political spectrum, with characters drawn from each extreme, ultimately suggesting that there is little difference between the two. He stated, "They differ only in their dogma. Their means and ends are hardly distinguishable."
Kubrick photographed A Clockwork Orange quickly and almost entirely on location in and around London. Despite the low-tech nature of the film as compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick showed his talent for innovation; at one point, he threw "an old Newman Sinclair clockwork mechanism camera" off a rooftop in order to achieve the effect he wanted. For the score, Kubrick enlisted electronic music composer Wendy Carlos
to adapt famous classical works (such as Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony) for the Moog synthesizer
. It is pivotal to the plot that the lead character, Alex, is fond of classical music, and that the brainwashing Ludovico treatment accidentally conditions him against it. As such, it was natural for Kubrick to continue the tradition begun in 2001: A Space Odyssey of using classical music in the score. In A Clockwork Orange, classical music accompanies scenes of violent mayhem and coercive sexuality. Both Pauline Kael
(who generally disliked Kubrick's work after Lolita) and Roger Ebert (who often praises Kubrick) found Kubrick's use of juxtaposing classical music and violence in this film unpleasant, Ebert calling it a "cute, cheap, dead-end dimension,"
and Kael, "self-important."
The film was extremely controversial because of its explicit depiction of teenage gang rape and violence, and was issued with an X rating in the United States. It was released in the same year as Straw Dogs and Dirty Harry
, and the three films sparked a debate in the media about the social effects of cinematic violence. The controversy was exacerbated when copycat crimes were committed in England by criminals wearing the same costumes as characters in A Clockwork Orange. British readers of the novel noted that Kubrick had omitted the final chapter (also omitted from American editions of the book) in which Alex finds redemption and sanity. After receiving death threats to himself and his family as a result of the controversy, Kubrick took the unusual step of removing the film from circulation in Britain. It was unavailable in the United Kingdom until its re-release in 2000, a year after Kubrick's death, although it could be seen in continental Europe. The Scala cinema in London's Kings Cross showed the film in the early 1990s, and at Kubrick's insistence, the cinema was sued and put out of business. In early 1973, Kubrick re-released A Clockwork Orange to cinemas in the United States with footage modified so that it could get its rating reduced to an R. This enabled many more newspapers to advertise it, since in 1972 many newspapers had stopped carrying any advertising for X-rated films due to the new association of that rating with pornography. In the mid-1990s, a documentary entitled Forbidden Fruit, about the censorship controversy, was released in Britain. Kubrick was unable to prevent the documentary makers from including footage from A Clockwork Orange in their film.
Barry Lyndon

, an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray
's The Luck of Barry Lyndon
(also known as Barry Lyndon), a picaresque novel
about the adventures and misadventures of an 18th-century Irish gambler and social climber. The cinematography and lighting techniques Kubrick used in Barry Lyndon were highly innovative. Most famously, interior scenes were shot with a specially adapted high-speed f/0.7 Zeiss camera lens originally developed for NASA
. This allowed many scenes to be lit only with candlelight, creating two-dimensional diffused-light images reminiscent of 18th-century paintings. Like its two predecessors the film does not have an original score. Irish traditional songs (performed by The Chieftains
) are combined with classical works from the period by Bach and others.
Reviewers such as Pauline Kael, who had been critical of Kubrick's previous work, found Barry Lyndon a cold, slow-moving, and lifeless film. Its measured pace and length—more than three hours—put off many American critics and audiences, although it received positive reviews from Rex Reed
and Richard Schickel
. TIME magazine published a cover story about the film, and Kubrick was nominated for three Academy Awards. The film as a whole was nominated for seven Academy Awards
and won four, more than any other Kubrick film. Despite this, Barry Lyndon was not a box office success in the U.S., although the film found a great audience in Europe, particularly in France. The French journal of film criticism, Cahiers du cinéma
, included Barry Lyndon at 67 on its top 100 list of all-time films. As with most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndons reputation has grown through the years, particularly among filmmakers. Director Martin Scorsese
has cited it as his favorite Kubrick film. Steven Spielberg has praised its "impeccable technique", though, when younger, he famously described it "like going through the Prado
without lunch."
In 1976, production designer Ken Adam
, who had worked with Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove and Barry Lyndon, asked Kubrick to visit the recently completed 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios
to provide advice on how to light the enormous soundstage, which had been built and prepared for the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me
. Kubrick agreed to consult when it was promised that nobody would ever know of his involvement. The agreement was honored until after Kubrick's death in 1999, when in 2000 it was revealed by Adam in a documentary on the making of The Spy Who Loved Me.
The Shining

, released in 1980, was adapted from the novel
of the same name by bestselling horror writer Stephen King
. The film stars Jack Nicholson
as Jack Torrance, a failed writer who takes a job as a winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel. He lives there with his wife, Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall
) and their young son, Danny (played by Danny Lloyd
), who is gifted with a form of telepathy
. As winter takes hold, the family's isolation deepens, and the demons and ghosts of the Overlook Hotel's dark past begin to awaken, driving Jack into a homicidal psychosis
.
In order to convey the claustrophobic oppression of the haunted hotel, Kubrick made extensive use of the newly invented Steadicam
, a weight-balanced camera support, which allowed for smooth hand-held camera movement in scenes where a conventional camera track was impractical. Although used for some scenes in a few previous motion pictures, Garrett Brown, Steadicam's inventor, was closely involved with this production and regarded it as the first picture to fully employ the new system's potential. More than any of his other films, The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick as a perfectionist
. Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of takes of certain scenes (approximately 1.3 million feet of film were shot). This process was particularly difficult for actress Shelley Duvall
, who was used to the faster, improvisational style of director Robert Altman
.
The film opened to mixed reviews, but proved a commercial success. Stephen King disliked the movie, calling Kubrick "a man who thinks too much and feels too little." As with most Kubrick films, subsequent critical reaction has treated the film more favorably. Among horror movie fans, The Shining is a cult classic, often appearing at the top of best horror film lists alongside Hitchcock
’s Psycho (1960), William Friedkin
’s The Exorcist
(1973), and other horror classics. Much of its imagery, such as the elevator shaft disgorging blood and the ghost girls in the hallway are among the most recognizable and widely known images from any Stanley Kubrick film, as are the lines "Redrum" and "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" as well as "Here's Johnny!". The financial success of The Shining renewed Warner Brothers' faith in Kubrick's ability to make artistically satisfying and profitable films after the commercial failure of Barry Lyndon in the United States.
Full Metal Jacket
Seven years later, Kubrick made his next film, Full Metal Jacket(1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford
's Vietnam War
novel The Short-Timers
. Kubrick said to film critic Steven Hall that his attraction to Gustav Hasford's book was because it was "neither antiwar or prowar", held "no moral or political position", and was primarily concerned with "the way things are."
Filming a Vietnam War film in England was a considerable challenge for Kubrick and his production team. Much of the filming was done in the Docklands area of London, with the ruined-city set created by production designer Anton Furst. As a result, the film is visually very different from other Vietnam War films such as Platoon
and Hamburger Hill
, most of which were shot in the Far East. Instead of a tropical, Southeast-Asian jungle, the second half of the story unfolds in a city, illuminating the urban warfare aspect of a war generally portrayed (and thus perceived) as jungle warfare, notwithstanding significant urban skirmishes like the Tet offensive. As actor Adam Baldwin put it "When you think of Vietnam, it's natural to imagine jungles. But this story is about urban warfare". Reviewers and commentators thought this contributed to the bleakness and seriousness of the film. R. Lee Ermey
served as the film's technical adviser in addition to his acting duties.
Full Metal Jacket received mixed critical reviews upon its release, but nonetheless found a reasonably large audience, despite being overshadowed by Oliver Stone
's Platoon
and Clint Eastwood
's Heartbreak Ridge
. As with Kubrick's other films, its critical status has increased immensely since its initial release.
Eyes Wide Shut
Kubrick's final film was Eyes Wide Shut(1999), starring Tom Cruise
and Nicole Kidman
as a wealthy Manhattan couple on a sexual odyssey. The story is based on Arthur Schnitzler
's Freudian novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story
in English), which Kubrick moved from 1920s Vienna
to New York City in the 1990s. The film's theme has been described by actor Jack Nicholson
as delving into questions on the "dangers of married life," and the "silent desperations of keeping an ongoing relationship alive".
Kubrick's wife noted his long-standing interest in the project, saying "over the years he would see friends getting divorced and remarried, and the topic [of the film] would come up." She knew that this was a subject he wanted to make into a film. Co-star Nicole Kidman
observed that "Stanley's expectations of people were not really high," although she also saw that his wife, to whom he had been married for over 41 years, "was the love of his life. He would talk about her, he adored her, something that people didn't know. His daughters adored them . . . I would see that, and he would talk about them very proudly." Nicholson agrees that "Stanley was very much a family man."
Although Kubrick was almost seventy years of age, he worked relentlessly for 15 months in order to get the film out by its planned release date of July 16, 1999. He worked 18 hours a day, all the while maintaining complete confidentiality about the film. Press releases were sent to the media, stating briefly that "Stanley Kubrick's next film will be Eyes Wide Shut, a story of jealousy and sexual obsession . . . "Eyes Wide Shut, like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange before it, faced censorship before release. Kubrick sent an unfinished preview copy to the stars and producers a few months before release, but his sudden death on March 7, 1999 came a few days after he finished editing, and he never saw the final version when it was released to the public.
Biographer Michel Ciment
believes that "he literally worked himself to death," trying to complete the film to his liking. Ciment explains that Kubrick's desire to keep this, and many of his earlier films, private and unpublicized during its production, was an expression of Kubrick's "will to power," and not a penchant for secrecy: "Kubrick felt, quite rightly, that the public generally knows far too much about a film before it opens and that the surrounding media frenzy made the joy of surprise and pleasure of discovery impossible."
Nicole Kidman
explains that while some critics describe the film's theme as "dark," in essence "it is a very hopeful film." During one interview in the documentary, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
, she states that Kubrick was indirectly stressing the moral values of "commitment and loyalty," adding that "ultimately, Eyes Wide Shut is about that commitment." Sidney Pollack, who acted in the film, adds that "the heart of [the film] was illustrating a truth about relationships and sexuality. But it was not illustrated in a literal way, but in a theatrical way." Michel Ciment agrees with Kidman, and likewise notes the positive meaning underlying the film, pointing out how some of it is voiced through the dialog, and suggests that the words "resonate like an epitaph" to Kubrick:
Death
On March 7, 1999—four days after screening a final cut of Eyes Wide Shut for his family, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman
, and Warner Bros. executives, Kubrick passed away in his sleep from a heart attack at the age of 70. He was buried next to his favorite tree in Childwickbury Manor
, Hertfordshire
, England, U.K. Following his death, several directors and actors discussed their experiences with Kubrick. Steven Spielberg
said in a 1999 interview that Dr. Strangelove made him forget about being drafted into the Army.
Unrealized projects
Kubrick both developed and was offered several film ideas which never saw completion. The most notable of these were an epic biopic of Napoleon and a Holocaust-themed film entitled Aryan Papers. When the film rights to Tolkien's The Lord of the Ringswere sold to United Artists, The Beatles
approached Kubrick to direct them in a film based on the books, but Kubrick told John Lennon he felt the story was unfilmable.
Projects completed by others
In 1956, Kubrick was announced as director of Gun's Up, the working title for the production of Charles Neider's novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones to be produced by Marlon Brando. Shortly after this announcement, the name of the film was changed to One-Eyed Jacks
. On November 20, 1958, Kubrick quit as director of One-Eyed Jacks so that he could begin production on Lolita. In 1960 he expanded on his reasoning, telling an interviewer: "When I left Brando's picture, it still didn't have a finished script. It had just become obvious to me that Brando wanted to direct the movie. I was just sort of playing wingman for Brando, to see that nobody shot him down." The film was completed with directorial credit given to Marlon Brando and released in 1961.
Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Kubrick collaborated with Brian Aldiss
on an expansion of his short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long
" into a three-act film. It was a futuristic fairy-tale about a robot that resembles and behaves as a child, and his efforts to become a 'real boy' in a manner similar to Pinocchio. Kubrick reportedly held long telephone discussions with Steven Spielberg
regarding the film, and, according to Spielberg, at one point stated that the subject matter was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his. In 1999, following Kubrick's death, Spielberg took the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers and composed a new screenplay and, in association with what remained of Kubrick's production unit, made the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The film was released in June 2001. It contains a posthumous producing credit for Stanley Kubrick at the beginning and the brief dedication "For Stanley Kubrick" at the end. The film contains many recurrent Kubrick motifs, such as an omniscient narrator, an extreme form of the three-act structure, the themes of humanity and inhumanity, and a sardonic view of psychiatry. In addition, John Williams
' score contains many allusions to pieces heard in other Kubrick films.
Influences
Alexander Walker, in his book Stanley Kubrick Directs, notes that Kubrick often mentioned Max Ophüls as an influence on his moving camera, especially the tracking shots in Paths of Glory. His "fascination with the fluid camera" of Ophuls, writes critic Gene D. Phillips, was also used effectively in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick described this effect in discussing Ophuls' films le Plaisir and The Earrings of Madam De: "the camera went through every wall and every floor." He once named Ophüls' Le Plaisir his favorite film. However, Ophüls himself derived this technique from his early work as assistant with director Anatole Litvak
in the 1930s, whose own cinematography style is described as "replete with the camera trackings, pans and swoops which later became the trademark of Max Ophuls."
Geoffrey Cocks sees the influence of Ophüls as going beyond this to include a sensibility drawn to stories of thwarted love and a preoccupation with predatory men. Critic Robert Kolker sees evident influence of Welles
on the same moving camera shots, while biographer Vincent LeBrutto states that Kubrick consciously identified with Welles. LeBrutto sees much influence of Welles' style on Kubrick's The Killing, "the multiple points of view, extreme angles, and deep focus" and on the style of the closing credits of Paths of Glory, and Quentin Curtis in The Daily Telegraph describes Welles as "[Kubrick's] great influence, in composition and camera movement." One particular film of John Huston, The Asphalt Jungle, sufficiently impressed Kubrick as to persuade him he wanted to cast Sterling Hayden in his first major feature The Killing.
Walker states that Kubrick never acknowledged Fritz Lang
as an influence on him, but holds that Lang's interests are analogous to Kubrick's with regard to an interest in myth and "the Teutonic unconscious". Michael Herr's memoir Kubrick states that Kubrick was deeply inspired by G. W. Pabst. In particular Pabst had for several decades also considered adapting Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, the basis of Eyes Wide Shut, although Pabst had been unable to come up with a suitable approach.
As a young man, Kubrick also was fascinated by the films of Russian filmmakers such as Eisenstein and Pudovkin. Kubrick also as a young man read Pudovkin’s seminal theoretical work, Film Technique which argues that editing makes film a unique art form, which needs to be effectively employed to manipulate the medium to its fullest. Kubrick recommended this work to others for years to come. Thomas Nelson describes this book as "the greatest influence of any single written work on the evolution of [Kubrick's] private aesthetics".
Russian documentary film maker Pavel Klushantsev
made a groundbreaking film in the 1950s entitled Road to the Stars, which is believed to have significantly influenced Kubrick's technique in 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly with regard to its accurate depiction of weightlessness and rotating space station. Indeed Encyclopedia Astronautica describes some scenes from 2001 as a "shot-for-shot duplication of Road to the Stars". Specific comparisons of shots from the two films have been analyzed by filmmaker Alessandro Cima. A 1994 issue of American Cinematographer states "When Stanley Kubrick made 2001: a Space Odyssey in 1968, he claimed to have been first to fly actor/astronauts on wires with the camera on the ground, shooting vertically while the actor's body covered the wires" but observes that Klushantsev had actually preceded him in this.
Kubrick was also a great admirer of the films of Bergman
, Vittorio De Sica
, Jean Renoir
, and Federico Fellini
, but the degree of their influence on his own style has not been assessed. In an early interview with Horizon magazine in the late 1950s, Kubrick stated, "I believe Ingmar Bergman, Vittorio De Sica and Federico Fellini are the only three filmmakers in the world who are not just artistic opportunists. By this I mean they don't just sit and wait for a good story to come along and then make it. They have a point of view which is expressed over and over and over again in their films, and they themselves write or have original material written for them."
Late in life, Kubrick became enamored with the works of David Lynch
, being particularly fascinated by Lynch's first major film Eraserhead
, which he asked cast members of The Shining to watch to establish the mood he wanted to convey.
Technique
For Kubrick, written dialogue was one element to be put in balance with mise en scène(set arrangements), music, and especially, editing. Inspired by Pudovkin
's treatise on film acting, Kubrick realized that one could create a performance in the editing room and often "re-direct" a film.
As he explained to a journalist,
Everything else [in film] comes from something else. Writing, of course, is writing; acting comes from the theatre; and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience.
Kubrick's method of operating thus became a quest for an emergent vision in the editing room, when all the elements of a film could be assembled. The price of this method, beginning as early as Spartacus (when he first had an ample budget for film stock), was endless exploratory re-shooting of scenes that was an exhaustive investigation of all possible variations of a scene.This enabled him to walk into the editing room with copious options. John Baxter has written:
Instead of finding the intellectual spine of a film in the script before starting work, Kubrick felt his way towards the final version of a film by shooting each scene from many angles and demanding scores of takes on each line. Then over months... he arranged and rearranged the tens of thousands of scraps of film to fit a vision that really only began to emerge during editing.
Writing style
Kubrick wrote or co-authored the screenplays to all of his films except for Fear and Desire (his first film) and Spartacus, but always adapted his screenplays from previously existing novels (except for Killer's Kiss). However, Kubrick was noted for often making moderate changes in characterization or plot structure which greatly altered the tone of the story. Notable changes from the source material in Kubrick's films include:1. In Lolita, Kubrick omits all mention of Professor Humbert's previous infatuation with underage girls, makes the character of Lolita much older, and greatly expands the role of Clare Quilty, a much more perverse child molester than Humbert. This has the effect of making Humbert far more sympathetic. As a result of all three of these changes, Greg Jenkins writes "A story originally told from the edge of a moral abyss is fast moving toward safer ground"
2. Kubrick converted Peter George's straight Cold War thriller Red Alert into his macabre black comedy Dr. Strangelove and gave it an entirely different conclusion. He began to see comedy inherent in the idea of mutual assured destruction
as he wrote the first draft, saying:
3. In A Clockwork Orange Kubrick made the writer victimized by Alex, F. Alexander, an elderly man speaking standard English, while in the book he is a very young political activist, who speaks the same odd slang as Alex and his droogs. In Burgess' novel, Mr. F. Alexander is a contemporary of Alex, while in Kubrick's film he is a contemporary of the Minister of the Interior whose legislation initiates the use of the brainwashing Ludovico technique
.
4. The most discussed change in The Shining (and certainly the one most objected to by author Stephen King
) is Kubrick's omission of Jack Torrance's return to sanity at the end of the novel, and relatively sympathetic character at the opening of the story. Kubrick also cut all hints that the hotel is itself sentient, while adding the element that the hotel was built on a Native American burial ground. The most famous scenes in the film, such as the revelation of the contents of Jack's book, the apparition of the twins in the hallway, Jack's encounter with the ghost of the dead woman in Room 237, and the chase through the hedge-maze have no counterpart in King's novel. Critic Mark Browning concludes that the King novel is about a haunted house, but Kubrick's film is about a haunted man.
5. In adapting The Short-Timers into Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick expanded the material set in boot camp, which is about 20% of the novel, into fully half of the film. Many viewers find this early material the most memorable in the film. Richard Jenkins believes this is consistent with Kubrick's general desire to explode the standard narrative conventions of film, as this results in the film appearing to be two short stories with the same characters told back-to-back.
6. In adapting Traumnovelle into Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick shifted the story from Vienna in the 1900s to New York City in the 1990s. In the novel, the husband and wife are Jews in a very conservative and anti-Semitic city, while in the film the husband is a fairly conventional WASP upper-middle-class professional in contemporary New York City. In the novel, the secret society upon which the husband stumbles is quite small, whereas in the film it encompasses a large section of the city's social elite. Kubrick has also significantly altered both the events at the mansion party and in the wife's dream as to notably change the tenor and mood of the story. Critic Randy Rasmussen suggests that the character of Bill is fundamentally more naïve, strait-laced, less disclosing and more unconscious of his vindictive motives than his counterpart, Fridolin.
In a book-length study of how Kubrick adapts novels to the screen, writer Greg Jenkins derives the following generalizations about Kubrick's screenplays:
1. Regardless of how a novel may begin, Kubrick launches his adaptation of it with a heavily visual sequence that immediately and purposefully seizes our attention.
2. Where it suits his purpose, Kubrick expunges parts of the original, including some characters, episodes, and swatches of dialogue.
3. Addressing himself to the portion of the narrative that remains, Kubrick distorts, reorders, and conflates many of its components.
4. Although skilled with words, Kubrick is equally skilled with and devoted to images, and he tells his stories as visually as possible.
5. In general, Kubrick lowers the amount and intensity of violence found in the original.
6. As Kubrick remakes the original narrative, he tends, with some exceptions, to simplify it.
7. Kubrick makes his heroes more virtuous than the novels' and his villains more wicked.
8. Predominately, Kubrick imbues his films with a morality that is more conventional than the novels'.
9. Kubrick's films are more obviously laced with moments of moderate-to-high drama than are the source materials.
10. From time to time, though it countervails his mainly reductive thrust, Kubrick expands one or more aspects of the original narrative.
11. Now and then, Kubrick invents his own material outright, and imposes it on the new narrative.
Trademark characteristics
Stanley Kubrick's films have several trademark characteristics. All but his first two full-length films and 2001 were adapted from existing novels (2001 being based on The Sentinelas well as having its own planned novelization), and he occasionally wrote screenplays in collaboration with writers (usually novelists, but a journalist in the case of Full Metal Jacket) who had limited screenwriting experience. Many of his films had voice-over narration, sometimes taken verbatim from the novel. With or without narration, all of his films contain extensive character's-point-of-view footage. The closing of films with "The End" went out of style in the wake of the advent of long closing credits in the 1970s. (Disney films, for example, stopped using "The End" in 1984). However, Kubrick continued to put it at the end of the credits in every one of his films, long after the rest of the film industry stopped using it. On the other hand, Kubrick occasionally dispensed with opening credits (in A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange), long before it became commonplace—as had Welles
in Citizen Kane
and Disney
in Fantasia
before him and George Lucas
and Francis Ford Coppola
would later do, most notably in Star Wars
and Apocalypse Now
. Kubrick's credits are always a slide show. His only rolling credits are the opening credits to The Shining.
Kubrick paid close attention to the releases of his films in other countries. Not only did he have complete control of the dubbing cast, but sometimes alternative material was shot for international releases—in The Shining, the text on the typewriter pages was re-shot for the countries in which the film was released; in Eyes Wide Shut, the newspaper headlines and paper notes were re-shot for different languages. Kubrick always personally supervised the foreign voice-dubbing and the actual script translation into foreign languages for all of his films. Since Kubrick's death, no new voice translations have been produced for any of the films he had control of; in countries where no authorized dubs exist, only subtitles are used for translation.
Beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey, all of his films except Full Metal Jacket used mostly pre-recorded classical music, in two cases electronically altered by Wendy Carlos
. He also often used merry-sounding pop music in an ironic way during scenes depicting devastation and destruction, especially in the closing credits or end sequences of a film.
In his review of Full Metal Jacket, Roger Ebert noted that many Kubrick films have a facial closeup of an unraveling character in which the character's head is tilted down and his eyes are tilted up, although Ebert does not think there is any deep meaning to these shots. Lobrutto's biography of Kubrick notes that his director of photography, Doug Milsome, coined the phrase the "Kubrick crazy stare". The connection of this stare with psychoanalysis is often made through the concept of "The Gaze
" and its implications in visual culture. Kubrick also extensively employed wide angle shots, character tracking shots, zoom shots, and shots down tall parallel walls.
Critic and Kubrick biographer Alexander Walker has noted Kubrick's repeated "corridor" compositions, of which two particularly well-known ones are the StarGate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the extensive use of the hotel corridors in The Shining.
Almost all Stanley Kubrick movies have a scene in or just outside a bathroom. (The more frequently cited example of this in 2001 is Dr. Floyd's becoming stymied by the Zero-Gravity Toilet en route to the moon, rather than David Bowman's exploration [while still wearing his spacesuit] of the bathroom adjacent to his celestial bedroom after his journey through the StarGate.)
Stanley Kubrick was a passionate chess player, often playing on the set of his films. Chess appears as a motif or a plot device in three of his films, The Killing, Lolita, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mario Falsetto believes that the marble floor in the room of the prisoner's trial in Paths of Glory is deliberately chosen to represent a chess board, with prisoners as "pawns in the game".
Many of Kubrick's films have back-references to previous Kubrick films. The best-known examples of this are the appearance of the soundtrack album for 2001: A Space Odyssey appearing in the record store in A Clockwork Orange and Quilty's joke about Spartacus in Lolita. Less obvious is the reference to a painter named Ludovico in Barry Lyndon, Ludovico being the name of the conditioning treatment in A Clockwork Orange.
Kubrick often employed the use of music as a "black joke" to achieve a chilling, ironic effect (one now often employed by Quentin Tarantino) by incongruously combining mismatched moods and styles. Igor Stravinsky
was arguably the innovator of this musical technique during his Neo-Classic period (1920s to the 1950s), but it was Kubrick who extended this idea to the big screen. This gives the intended emotional impact of a scene even more power. Brief examples of this include Vera Lynn
singing We'll Meet Again
in the final scene of Dr. Strangelove (during a nuclear holocaust), using some older classical music for the futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey, and using Gene Kelly
's Singin’ in the Rain
for the end credits in the dystopian world of A Clockwork Orange, and light pop music in Full Metal Jacket.
The use of long takes, while not an unknown technique before Kubrick, became known in the film community as a "Kubrickian" trademark—for instance the extended tricycle-riding sequence in The Shining or the long pullback from Alex's face at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange.
Themes
Through his films, Kubrick often addressed concern with the over-mechanization of society which, in its attempt to create a safe environment, creates an artificial sterility that breeds the very evils it tries to exclude. Multiple critics have noted that Kubrick's earlier films have more straightforward linear narrative while the later films are moderately and subtly surreal reflecting a sense of social dislocation and confusion. The emotional distance Kubrick maintains from many of his characters have caused critics to see Kubrick as a cold and detached rationalist, while the recurrence of strongly psychopathic characters from Alex DeLarge to Jack Torrance in his films have caused many to view Kubrick's outlook as deeply pessimistic. In his book Nihilism in Film and Television, Kevin L. Stoehr writes "If there is one film director whose movies express consistently, in terms of both form and content, the pervasive dangers and creative opportunities of nihilism in contemporary culture, that filmmaker is the late Stanley Kubrick". A frequently recurring observation on the Kubrick film that Spielberg completed A.I is that it uneasily meshes Spielberg's rosy optimistic outlook with Kubrick's pessimistic one, although one reviewer wrote “[Spielberg] has done a remarkable job in balancing Kubrick's pessimism with his optimism without having one overcrowd the other”.Newspaper obituaries of Kubrick, the Encyclopædia Britannica and Vincent LoBrutto's biography of the director (which was spoken of approvingly by Kubrick's wife) all characterize Kubrick broadly as pessimistic. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: “if Mr. Kubrick's misanthropy prompted some critics to accuse him of coldness and inhumanity, others saw his pessimism as an uncompromisingly Swiftian vision of human absurdity.” So also did Kubrick's most severe critic, Pauline Kael. The charge was repeated in reviews of the multi-film DVD boxed set of his films in 2007, a New Jersey film critic writing “And yet preserved too – like an ugly insect trapped in amber – are some of the artist's most problematic qualities, including a bitter pessimism, a cruel humor and an almost godlike superiority that often viewed other people – and particularly women – as little more than impediments." A pessimistic streak was found in essays collected in The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick, one of which characterizes Eyes Wide Shut as “a kind of Sartrean pessimism about our inevitable dissatisfaction with romantic love.”
Not all critics agree with this assessment. Other essays in the same anthology find Eyes Wide Shut to be largely optimistic. James Naremore in On Kubrick characterizes Kubrick as a modernist in the tradition of Joyce
and Kafka
with their distrust of mass society. As such, Naremore notes that Kubrick's detachment from his subjects does not make him a dour pessimist, although Kubrick does often dwell on “the failure of scientific reasoning, and the fascistic impulses in masculine sexuality”. Peter Kramer's study of 2001 argues it is meant to counterweight the pessimism of Kubrick's previous Dr. Strangelove.
Some view Kubrick's pessimism as either at least overstated by others or even more apparent than real, an impression created by Kubrick's refusal of any bland or cheap optimism, refusal to make films that conform to conventional ideas of a spectacle, and a desire to employ films as a wake-up call to humanity to understand its capacity for evil. The editors of The Kubrick Site note that Kubrick avoids cinematically conventional ways of structuring stories. This does indeed create for many viewers a sense of emotionless detachment from the human subjects as noted above. For example, Kubrick often prefers lengthy dialogue scenes shot from one camera angle with no cutting. But the editors of TKS believe this is done in order to establish a life of characters beyond dialogue which "helps to reveal, in the spaces and silences, some of the emotional nature permeating the film's world" as well as a realistic sense of the characters' situatedness in time and society. Kubrick's focus is not just on individual characters but on the larger society around them and how it affects their motivation, often in negative ways. The authors also stress that however bleak Kubrick's outlook (intermittently) is, he is not a misanthrope.
A recent outspoken dissenter from pessimistic readings of Kubrick is author Julian Rice, a scholar of Native American literature. His book Kubrick's Hope argues that although there is a powerful vision of evil in Kubrick, there is vision of redemption and goodness in Kubrick's films stronger than often initially recognized, a vision focused both on family feeling and access to the sublime depths of the subconscious beyond superficial socialization. However, Rice has been alleged to misrepresent the work of prior Kubrick film scholars, particularly with reference to just how pessimistic or misanthropic they actually think Kubrick's films are.
Spielberg
, himself a noted cinematic optimist and close personal friend of Kubrick, expressed a similar view of Kubrick. Going against the grain of the view that Kubrick's films are misanthropic and pessimistic, Spielberg in a tribute to Kubrick at the 71st Academy awards said: "He dared us to have the courage of his convictions, and when we take that dare, we're transported directly to his world, and we're inside his vision. And in the whole history of movies, there has been nothing like that vision ever. It was a vision of hope and wonder, of grace and of mystery. It was a gift to us, and now it's a legacy." Kubrick himself denied that he was a pessimist, and summarized his views in a 1968 interview with Playboy
: "The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with the indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."
Frequent and memorable collaborators
Kubrick did not generally reuse actors on film after film in the manner of John Ford, Martin Scorsese
, or Akira Kurosawa
. However, Kubrick did on several occasions work with the same actor more than once. In lead roles, Sterling Hayden appeared in both The Killing and Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, and Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory and Spartacus. In supporting roles, Joe Turkel
appears in The Killing, Paths of Glory, and The Shining, Philip Stone
appears in A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining, Leonard Rossiter
is featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon, while Timothy Carey
is in both The Killing and Paths of Glory. A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon saw the largest crossover, with six actors (including Patrick Magee
) having roles of various lengths in each film.
Although Kubrick had a reputation as a non-collaborative and controlling director, he atypically allowed actors Peter Sellers (in both Lolita and Dr. Strangelove) and R. Lee Ermey (in Full Metal Jacket) to freely improvise most of their own dialogue.
]
Photographer Dmitri Kasterine, himself regarded as "one of the most significant portrait photographers working in Britain from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s", began a long association with Kubrick in 1964 when he began shooting stills during filming of Dr Strangelove and later for 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kasterine was commissioned to take portraits of Kubrick for publications including the Daily Telegraph Magazine, Harpers & Queen and a variety of his work was published in The Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Interview, and The New York Times. Though Kubrick was noted for keeping his production sets extremely private by banning uninvited visitors, Kasterine was allowed onto the sets of numerous Kubrick films to shoot both candid and posed photos. In 2010 and 2011, many of his Kubrick photos were on display for the first time in the United Kingdom at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Four writers who co-authored screenplays with Kubrick subsequently wrote memoirs of their experience working with him. Arthur C. Clarke
's The Lost Worlds of 2001 traces all the intermediate versions of the story from first draft to final project. Diane Johnson
published an essay about her experience collaborating with Kubrick and has discussed it frequently in both lectures and interviews. Michael Herr
, Kubrick's co-screenwriter on Full Metal Jacket wrote a book simply titled Kubrick which covers not only his collaboration on the film, but also his friendship with the director over the last 20 years of his life. Kubrick's co-screenwriter on Eyes Wide Shut, Frederic Raphael
, wrote a notoriously unflattering memoir of Kubrick entitled Eyes Wide Open which has been denounced by Kubrick's family, notably on Christianne Kubrick's website. Similarly, Diane Johnson has stated
Two authors of studies of Kubrick's films, Alexander Walker and Michel Ciment, worked closely with Kubrick on their books, with Kubrick personally providing the authors with many production photos and film stills and crucial information about the production of his films. Walker's book Stanley Kubrick, Director saw both a 1972 (entitled Stanley Kubrick Directs) and a 2000 edition, and Michel Ciment's book Stanley Kubrick saw both a 1980 and 2003 edition (the latter called Stanley Kubrick- The Definitive Edition)
One of Kubrick's longest collaborations was with Leon Vitali
, who, after playing the older Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon, became Kubrick's personal assistant, working as the casting director on his following films, and supervising film-to-video transfers for Kubrick. He also appeared in Eyes Wide Shut, playing the ominous Red Cloak, who confronts Tom Cruise during the infamous orgy scene. Since Kubrick's death, Vitali has overseen the restoration of both picture and sound elements for most of Kubrick's films. He has also collaborated frequently with Eyes Wide Shut co-star Todd Field
on his pictures.
Family cameos
Stanley Kubrick's daughter Vivian has cameos in 2001: A Space Odyssey (as Heywood Floyd's daughter), Barry Lyndon (as a girl at the birthday party for young Bryan Lyndon), The Shining (as a party ghost), and Full Metal Jacket (as a TV reporter). His stepdaughter Katharina has cameos in A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut, and her character's son in the latter is played by her real son. Kubrick's wife Christiane Kubrickappeared prior to her marriage to Kubrick in Paths of Glory, billed as Susanne Christian (her birth name is Christiane Susanne Harlan), and as a cafe guest in Eyes Wide Shut.
Legacy
Kubrick made only thirteen feature films in his life, comparatively low in number compared to contemporaries, due to his meticulous dedication to every aspect of film production. A number of his films are recognized as seminal classics within their genre.Cinematography techniques
Among Kubrick's notable innovations in filmmaking technique are his use of special effects in cinematography. For 2001: A Space Odyssey, he made innovative uses of both slit-scan photographyand front-screen projection
. Previously used to create image distortions or blurriness, slit-scan was used by Kubrick to create sophisticated animation for the StarGate sequence. This earned Kubrick his only personal Oscar, awarded for special effects. Although front projection had been used earlier, Space Odyssey was its first use on a large scale, and Kubrick employed a specially built 8x10 projector for the Dawn of Man sequence, as he did not believe that matting or rear-projection would create a sufficiently realistic effect.
Kubrick also made innovative use of Zeiss camera lenses for photographing scenes lit only by actual candlelight in Barry Lyndon. In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick relates how he felt that most films containing candle-lit scenes look phony, due to the artificial light flickering off-camera. Kubrick wanted the more authentic look of 19th-century paintings.
Kubrick was also among the first to use the then-revolutionary Steadicam
in The Shining to allow smooth stabilized tracking with the camera in motion, without the use of a dolly limiting the camera's point of view. The inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown
, became heavily involved with the production, as he believed The Shining was the first film to fully realize the Steadicam's full potential, going well beyond "stunt shots and staircases".
After Kubrick, the use of slit-scan to create animation effects was employed in the credits sequence to Doctor Who
. Front-screen projection has been used in James Bond and Superman films, and the Steadicam has been employed in Star Wars films.
Industry response
Leading directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg
, James Cameron
, Woody Allen
, Terry Gilliam
, the Coen brothers
, Ridley Scott
, and George A. Romero
, have cited Kubrick as a source of inspiration, and in the case of Spielberg, collaboration. On the DVD of Eyes Wide Shut, Steven Spielberg, in an interview, comments on Kubrick that "nobody could shoot a picture better in history" but the way that Kubrick "tells a story is antithetical to the way we are accustomed to receiving stories". Writing in the introduction to a recent edition of Michel Ciment's Kubrick, film director Martin Scorsese notes that most of Kubrick's films were misunderstood and under-appreciated when first released. Then came a dawning recognition that they were masterful works unlike any other films. Perhaps most notably, Orson Welles
, one of Kubrick’s greatest personal influences and all-time favorite directors, famously said that: “Among those whom I would call “younger generation” Kubrick appears to me to be a giant.”
Many directors have mentioned Kubrick as having made one of their favorite films: Richard Linklater
, Sam Mendes
, Joel Schumacher
, Taylor Hackford
. and Darren Aronofsky
.
Kubrick continues to be cited as a major influence by many directors, including Christopher Nolan
, David Fincher
, Guillermo del Toro
, David Lynch
, Lars Von Trier
, Michael Mann, and Gaspar Noé
. Many filmmakers imitate Kubrick's inventive and unique use of camera movement and framing. For example, several of Jonathan Glazer
's music videos contain visual references to Kubrick. The Coen Brother's Barton Fink, in which the hotel itself seems malevolent, contains a hotel hallway Steadicam shot as an homage to The Shining. The storytelling style of their Hudsucker Proxy was influenced by Dr. Strangelove. Director Tim Burton
has included a few visual homages to Kubrick in his work, notably using actual footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, and modeling the look of Tweedledee and Tweedledum in his version of Alice in Wonderland
on the Grady girls in The Shining. Film critic Roger Ebert
also noted that Burton's Mars Attacks!
was partially inspired by Dr. Strangelove. Burton's only music video, that of The Killers' Bones (2006), includes clips from Kubrick's Lolita, as well as other films from the general era.
Paul Thomas Anderson
(who was fond of Kubrick as a teenager) in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, stated "it's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It can all seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with." Reviewer William Arnold described Anderson's There Will Be Blood
as being stylistically an homage to Kubrick "particularly "2001: A Space Odyssey" – opening with a similar prologue that jumps in stages over the years and using a soundtrack throughout that employs anachronistic music."
Although Michael Moore
specializes in documentary filmmaking, at the beginning of shooting his only non-documentary feature film Canadian Bacon
, he sat his cast and crew down to watch Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. He told them "What this movie was in the '60s, is what we should aspire to with this film." Moore had previously written Kubrick a letter telling him how much Bacon was inspired by Strangelove.
Film director Frank Darabont
has been inspired by Kubrick's use of music. In an interview with The Telegraph, he states that 2001 took "the use of music in film" to absolute perfection, and one shot employing classical music in The Shawshank Redemption follows Kubrick's lead. On the other hand, while Darabont has followed Kubrick in directing two Stephen King adaptations, Darabont shares Stephen King's negative view of Kubrick's adaption of The Shining. In the same interview, Darabont said
Critics occasionally detect a Kubrickian influence when the actual filmmaker acknowledges none. Critics have noticed the influence of Stanley Kubrick on Danish independent director Nicolas Winding Refn. Jim Pappas suggests this comes from his employment of Kubrick's cinematographer for The Shining and Barry Lyndon in his film Fear X, suggesting "it is the Kubrick influence that leaves us asking ourselves what we believe we should know is true". The apparent influence of Kubrick on his film Bronson was noted by the Los Angeles Times and the French publication Evene However, when asked by Twitch about the very frequent comparisons by critics of the film Bronson to A Clockwork Orange, Refn denied the influence. Refn stated
Some filmmakers have been critical of Kubrick's work, such as those of the remodernist film
movement; Jesse Richards
described Kubrick's work as "boring and dishonest". Peter Rinaldi, in his essay on the Remodernist Film Manifesto for Mungbeing, The Shore as Seen from the Deep Sea, defends the manifesto, writing:
I certainly don't share in my friend's opinion of this man's work, but I actually think this is a hugely important part of the manifesto. A lot of us came to be filmmakers because a particular director's (or a number of directors) work inspired us. A friend of mine calls these inspirational figures his "Giants", which I think is a great word for them because sometimes they are built up so much in our minds that we don't think we, or our work, can ever really reach them and theirs. I think, for the most part, the generation that I grew up in had Kubrick as their Giant. His work has a mystical "perfectionism" that is awe-inspiring at times. This perfectionism is anathema to the Remodernist mentality and for many healthy reasons, this giant (or whatever giant towers over your work) must fall in our minds. We must become the giant.
Actor Robert Duvall
(who never worked for Kubrick) stated on the fifth in The Hollywood Reporter's roundtable series in 2010 that he thought Kubrick's knack for an unusually high number of takes (often over 50) made him an "actor's enemy". He stated that both A Clockwork Orange and The Shining were "great movies" but contained "the worst performances he had ever seen in movies". On the other hand, Nicole Kidman (who co-starred in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) held that the value of Kubrick's enormous number of takes was that actors stopped consciously thinking about acting technique and went to a deeper place. She stated "He believed that what it does to you, as an actor, was that you would lose control of your sense of self, of the part of you that was internally watching your own performance. Eventually, he felt, you would stop censoring yourself."
Homages
In 2001, a number of persons who worked with Kubrick on his films created the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, released by Warner Bros. It was produced and directed by Kubrick's brother-in-law, Jan Harlan
, who had also been executive producer of Kubrick's last four films. The camera and sound for the documentary was managed by his son, Manuel Harlan, who was also the still photographer for Eyes Wide Shut and video operator for Full Metal Jacket.
In 2000, BAFTA renamed their Britannia award the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award. Kubrick is among filmmakers such as Griffith
, Olivier
(whom Kubrick directed in Spartacus), Cecil B. DeMille
, and Irving Thalberg
, all of whom have had annual awards named after them. Kubrick won this award in 1999, one year prior to its being renamed in his honor.
Analysts of the TV series The Simpsons
argue it contains more references to Kubrick films than any other pop culture phenomenon. References abound not only to 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining but also to Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Lolita, and Full Metal Jacket. It has been noted that while references to "fantastic fiction" in The Simpsons are copious, "there are two masters of the genre whose impact on The Simpsons supersedes that of all others: Stanley Kubrick and Edgar Allan Poe." Similarly, it has been observed that "...the show's almost obsessive references to the films of Stanley Kubrick...[make it] as if the show's admittance of these films into the show's pantheon of intertextual allusions finally marked their entry into the deepest subconscious level of the global pop cultural mind. When the Director's Guild of Great Britain
gave Kubrick a lifetime achievement award, they included a cut-together sequence of all the homages from the show.
In 2009 there was an exhibition of paintings and photos inspired by Kubrick's films in Dublin, Ireland, entitled 'Stanley Kubrick: Taming Light'. It was displayed at the Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin from October 1 to 31. The same year, online toymaker "quartertofour" released a version of Rubik's Cube
with prints of photos from six of Kubrick's films on the side of the cube. (This is not to be confused with the online game Kubrick with computer images of Rubik's Cube which has no connection with Stanley Kubrick.) In 2010, painter Carlos Ramos held an exhibition entitled "Kubrick" at the Copro gallery in Los Angeles. It featured paintings in a variety of styles based on scenes from Stanley Kubrick films.
The video for pop singer Lady Gaga
's song Bad Romance was found by Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone magazine to be heavily influenced by the filmmaking style of Kubrick. Lady Gaga has also employed a hip-hop remix of the electronic version of Purcell's music that opens the film Clockwork Orange in her concerts and in her mini-movie The Fame. Finally, her song Dance in the Dark has the lines "Find your Jesus, Find your Kubrick".
Studies of Kubrick
At least two full-length books on Stanley Kubrick are devoted to frame-by-frame analyses of his visual style: Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis by Alexander Walker, and Stanley Kubrick: Visual Poet 1928–1999 (Basic Film) by Paul Duncan. History professor Geoffrey Cocks notes that Kubrick has what he calls an "open narrative" style that "requires the audience to derive meaning actively rather than being passively instructed, entertained, and manipulated." On the other hand, Cocks believes that Kubrick's preoccupation with sweeping overarching historical themes causes him to frequently sacrifice character development. "His films consistently display a basic taxonomy of violence, systems of control, and inherent human evil. This idée fixe freezes the people in his films into types rather than fully developed characters."Alternative adaptations
Three of Stanley Kubrick's films have had their source material re-adapted in some fashion: Anthony Burgess's stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange in 1990, which he hoped would be considered a more definitive adaptation than Kubrick's film;the television miniseries
of The Shining, written and produced by Stephen King which King hoped would stand as the authorized adaptation; and Adrian Lyne's adaptation
of Lolita, which had the blessing of Vladimir Nabokov's son, Dmitri (who echoed his father's moderate misgivings about Kubrick's version). Both Burgess and King stated that they were annoyed by Kubrick's denying their lead characters (Alex DeLarge and Jack Torrance, respectively) a final redemption that was present in the source material.
Portrayal in film
Kubrick was portrayed by Stanley Tucciin the 2004 film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Sellers appeared in two Kubrick films, but the material with Kubrick in this film is focused on Sellers' appearance in Dr. Strangelove.
Hoaxes, parodies and conspiracy theories involving Kubrick
In the early 1990s, a con artist named Alan Conwayfrequented the London entertainment scene claiming to be Stanley Kubrick, and temporarily deceived New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich
. Kubrick's personal assistant, Anthony Frewin, helped track Conway down and wrote the screenplay for the film Colour Me Kubrick
based on the Conway affair.
In 2002, with the cooperation of Kubrick's surviving family, the French film maker William Karel
(after initially planning a straight documentary on Stanley Kubrick) directed a hoax mockumentary about Kubrick and the NASA moon landing entitled Dark Side of the Moon. The film purported to demonstrate that the NASA moon landings had been faked and that the moon landing footage had been directed by Stanley Kubrick during the production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In spite of clues that the film is a news parody, some test audiences believed the film to be sincere, including at least one believer in the moon landing conspiracy.
An earlier 1995 tongue-in-cheek article promoted essentially the same mock hoax about Kubrick, and was also deemed sincere by some readers. Originally posted on the Usenet humor news group 'alt.humor.best-of-usenet', it was later reproduced in venues not devoted to parody.
An entirely sincere documentary film making the same claim as Karel's parodic "mockumentary" was self-released on DVD in 2011 by conspiracy theorist and occultist Jay Weidner entitled Kubrick's Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick; Part One: Kubrick and Apollo. The science magazine Discovery reviewed an earlier article by Weidner on which his film was based as "bunk" but "oddly compelling" and "strangely fascinating".
A second recurring conspiracy theory surrounding Stanley Kubrick is that he was a secret member of a massive Freemason-Illuminati organization and hid clues of its existence in many of his films. Theorists claim Kubrick disclosed too much in Eyes Wide Shut and was subsequently assassinated. Cracked.com listed this as #1 in their list of 5 Absurd (But Mind Blowing) Pop Culture Conspiracy Theories. Although the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to the New World Order claims to be skeptical of the actual conspiracy theories, it takes at face value the claim that Masonic symbolism is woven into Eyes Wide Shut.
Documentary short films
As director, writer, cinematographer, and sound- Day of the FightDay of the FightDay of the Fight is a 1951 American short subject documentary film shot in black-and-white and also the first picture directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick financed the film himself, and it is based on an earlier photo feature he had done as a photographer for Look magazine in 1949...
(1951, RKO Radio Pictures)
(also producer and uncredited editor) - Flying PadreFlying PadreFlying Padre is a 1951 short subject black-and-white documentary film. It is the second picture directed by Stanley Kubrick, after Day of the Fight. The film is nine minutes long.-Story:...
(1951, RKO Radio Pictures)
(also writer) - The SeafarersThe SeafarersThe Seafarers is Stanley Kubrick's third film, a short for the Seafarers International Union, directed in June 1953.There are shots of ships, machinery, a canteen, and a union meeting. The film was shot in color, and was supervised by the staff of The Seafarers Log, the union magazine...
(1953, Seafarers International Pictures)
(also editor)
Day of the Fight
was part of RKO-Pathé's "This Is America" series. The Flying Padre was an RKO-Pathe Screenliner. The Seafarers and Spartacus were Kubrick's only color films prior to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Feature films
Year | Film | Director |
Producer |
Screenplay (in part or whole) |
Editor |
Cinematographer |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1953 | Fear and Desire Fear and Desire Fear and Desire is a military action/adventure film by Stanley Kubrick. It is Kubrick’s first feature film and is also one of his least-seen productions... |
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1955 | Killer's Kiss Killer's Kiss Killer's Kiss is a 1955 film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Howard Sackler. It is the second feature film directed by Kubrick... |
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1956 | The Killing | |||||
1957 | Paths of Glory Paths of Glory Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack... |
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1960 | Spartacus Spartacus (film) Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast... |
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1962 | Lolita Lolita (1962 film) Lolita is a 1962 comedy-drama film by Stanley Kubrick based on the classic novel of the same title by Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Sue Lyon as Dolores Haze and Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze with Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.Due to the MPAA's restrictions at... |
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1964 | Dr. Strangelove | |||||
1968 | 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) 2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel... |
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1971 | A Clockwork Orange A Clockwork Orange (film) A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick... |
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1975 | Barry Lyndon Barry Lyndon Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period romantic war film produced, written, and directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray which recounts the exploits of an 18th century Irish adventurer... |
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1980 | The Shining The Shining (film) The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an... |
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1987 | Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is an adaptation of the 1979 novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford and stars Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Arliss Howard and Adam Baldwin. The film follows a platoon of U.S... |
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1999 | Eyes Wide Shut Eyes Wide Shut Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr... |
1 Uncredited
Stanley Kubrick was responsible for the underlying concept of Steven Spielberg
's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence which was produced after his death, by his brother-in-law, Jan Harlan
. Kubrick is thanked in the credits, but is not credited as writer. A new screenplay was written by Steven Spielberg based on a 90-page story treatment done in 1990 by Ian Watson which in turn had closely followed Kubrick's stated directives. The film is based on a short story by Brian Aldiss
.
Home video and screen size
With the exception of Space Odyssey, Kubrick had authorized only cropped and screen-fitted transfers of his films to videotape. When he died in 1999, Warner Home Video released these films with the transfers that Kubrick approved. In 2007, Warner Home Video remastered five of his later films in High-Definition, releasing the titles for the first time in widescreen format, preserving the theatrical screen ratios.During the laserdisc era, The Criterion Collection released six earlier Kubrick films, but released only Spartacus and 2001 in widescreen, although others had been widescreen in theatres. Earlier DVD releases of The Killing, Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove (whether by Criterion, MGM, or Sony) were standard 4:3 screen, while later releases were widescreen.
Earlier widescreen releases of 2001 were slightly cropped due to being transferred from a 35mm print, but this was corrected in the most recent DVD release.
Awards and nominations
All of Stanley Kubrick's later films, except for The Shining, were nominated for Oscars or Golden Globes, in various categories. 2001: A Space Odyssey received numerous technical awards, including a BAFTA award for cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth and an Academy Award for best visual effects, which Kubrick (as director of special effects on the film) received. This was Kubrick's only personal Oscar win among 13 nominations. Nominations for his films were mostly in the areas of cinematography, art design, screenwriting, and music. Only four of his films were nominated by either an Oscar or Golden Globe for their acting performances, Spartacus, Lolita, Doctor Strangelove, and A Clockwork Orange.Personal awards for Kubrick:
Year | Title | Awards (limited to Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Razzies) |
---|---|---|
1953 | Fear and Desire Fear and Desire Fear and Desire is a military action/adventure film by Stanley Kubrick. It is Kubrick’s first feature film and is also one of his least-seen productions... |
|
1955 | Killer's Kiss Killer's Kiss Killer's Kiss is a 1955 film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Howard Sackler. It is the second feature film directed by Kubrick... |
|
1956 | The Killing | Nominated for BAFTA Award: Best Film from Any Source |
1957 | Paths of Glory Paths of Glory Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack... |
|
1960 | Spartacus | Won Golden Globe: Best Drama Picture, Nominated Golden Globe: Best Director Nominated for BAFTA Award: Best Film from Any Source |
1962 | Lolita Lolita (1962 film) Lolita is a 1962 comedy-drama film by Stanley Kubrick based on the classic novel of the same title by Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Sue Lyon as Dolores Haze and Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze with Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.Due to the MPAA's restrictions at... |
Nominated for Oscar: Best Adapted Screenplay (Kubrick's extensive work on this was uncredited- the nominee was Vladimir Nabokov) Nominated for Golden Globes: Best Director |
1964 | Dr. Strangelove | Nominated for Oscars: Best Director, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay Won BAFTA Awards: Best British Film, Best Film from any Source, Nominated BAFTA: Best British Screenplay (nomination shared with Peter George and Terry Southern) |
1968 | 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) 2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel... |
Won Oscar : Best Special Effects Nominated for Oscars: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (nomination shared with Arthur C. Clarke) Nominated for BAFTA: Best Film |
1971 | A Clockwork Orange A Clockwork Orange (film) A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick... |
Nominated for Oscars: Best Director, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated for Golden Globes: Best Director, Best Drama Picture Nominated for BAFTA Awards: Best Direction, Best Film, Best Screenplay Won 2 recognitions by The New York Film Critics: Best Director, Best Picture |
1975 | Barry Lyndon Barry Lyndon Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period romantic war film produced, written, and directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray which recounts the exploits of an 18th century Irish adventurer... |
Nominated for Oscars : Best Director, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated for 2 Golden Globes: Best Director, Best Drama Picture Won BAFTA Award: Best Direction Nominated: Best Film |
1980 | The Shining The Shining (film) The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an... |
Nominated for Razzie: Worst Director Nominated for Saturn: Best Direction |
1987 | Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is an adaptation of the 1979 novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford and stars Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Arliss Howard and Adam Baldwin. The film follows a platoon of U.S... |
Nominated for Oscar: Best Adapted Screenplay (nomination shared with Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford) |
1999 | Eyes Wide Shut Eyes Wide Shut Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr... |
Kubrick received two awards from major film festivals: "Best Director" from the Locarno International Film Festival
in 1959 for Killer's Kiss, and "Filmcritica Bastone Bianco Award" at the Venice Film Festival
in 1999 for Eyes Wide Shut. He also was nominated for the "Golden Lion
" of the Venice Film Festival in 1962 for Lolita. The Venice Film Festival awarded him the "Career Golden Lion" in 1997. He received the D.W. Griffith Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America
, and another life-achievement award from the Director's Guild of Great Britain
, and the Career Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival. Posthumously, the Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival awarded him the "Honorary Grand Prize" for life achievement in 2008. He also received the coveted Hugo Award
three time for his work in science fiction.
In 1997, three of Kubrick's films were selected by the American Film Institute
for their list of the 100 Greatest Movies in America: 2001: A Space Odyssey
at #22, Dr. Strangelove at No.26 and A Clockwork Orange
at #46. In 2007, the AFI updated their list with 2001 ranked at #15, Dr. Strangelove ranked at No.39 and Clockwork Orange ranked at #70; Spartacus
was one of the new selections, ranking at #81.
See also
- Stanley Kubrick ArchiveStanley Kubrick ArchiveThe Stanley Kubrick Archive is held by the University of the Arts London in their Archives and Special Collection Centre at the London College of Communication. The Archive opened in October 2007 and contains material collected and owned by the film director Stanley Kubrick . It was transferred...
- Stanley Kubrick's BoxesStanley Kubrick's BoxesStanley Kubrick's Boxes is a 2008 documentary film directed by Jon Ronson about the film director Stanley Kubrick. Ronson's intent was not to create a biography of the filmmaker but rather to understand Kubrick by studying the director's vast personal collection of memorabilia related to his...
- Stanley Kubrick: A Life in PicturesStanley Kubrick: A Life in PicturesStanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures is a 2001 documentary about the life and work of Stanley Kubrick, famed film director, made by his long-time assistant and brother-in-law Jan Harlan...
- List of famous amateur chess players
Further reading
- Lyons, V and Fitzgerald, M. (2005) ‘’Asperger syndrome : a gift or a curse?’’ New York : Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59454-387-6
- Deutsches Filmmuseum (Ed.): Stanley Kubrick ; Kinematograph Nr. 14, Frankfurt/Main, 2004. ISBN 978-3-88799-069-5 (English edition)
Documentary
- Stanley Kubrick: A Life in PicturesStanley Kubrick: A Life in PicturesStanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures is a 2001 documentary about the life and work of Stanley Kubrick, famed film director, made by his long-time assistant and brother-in-law Jan Harlan...
. Documentary film. Dir. Jan Harlan. Warner Home Video, 2001. 142 min.
External links
- Video: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures Introduction, 2.5 minutes
- Video: Compilation of film clips, 8 minutes
- Detailed analysis about Stanley Kubrick (French language)
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Stanley Kubrick Archive at the London College of CommunicationLondon College of CommunicationThe London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, located in Elephant and Castle. It has about 5,000 students on 60 courses in media and design courses preparing students for careers in the creative industries...
- The Authorized Stanley Kubrick Web Site by Warner Bros.
- The Kubrick Site
- Kubrick Multimedia Film Guide
- Kubrick on Senses of Cinema (In Depth Biography)
- Multi-media Kubrick archive
- The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
: Citizen Kubrick - List of interviews and Look photographs
- List of all the published Look photographs
- The Hechinger Debacle
- Stanley Kubrick Interviews, by Stanley Kubrick, Gene D. PhillipsGene D. PhillipsGene D. Phillips is an American author, educator, and Catholic priest. Phillips has been a prolific author of biographical books on filmmakers, and has published extended interviews with many filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, and Joseph Losey.Phillips was raised...
- Photo gallery: Kubrick on set