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| Stanley Kubrick trying his best...to look like a camera |
In between the Golden Age of Hollywood that ended in the late 50's and the
New Hollywood that began in the early 70's, to me, one director stands out:
Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was the creative force behind many of the most
significant and iconic films ever made, and to this day, his work is closely
studied in film schools and discussed elsewhere worldwide. A jack-of-all-trades
and a master of most, Kubrick directed, wrote or co-wrote, and produced the
majority of his films, most of which even the most casual movie-goer has seen,
or at least heard of.
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| Kid Kubrick into his work |
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| NYC hot dog gobblers |
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| A showgirl shows her shoe |
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| Kubrick always liked a good mask |
Although never having a formal education in his chosen profession, Kubrick
demonstrated his innate talents at an early age as an amateur and then
professional photographer, and his photographer's eye remained with him for all
of his professional life. Hired by Look magazine
as a teenager, his photographs were striking in the way they captured their
subjects. Kubrick clearly had an incandescent talent.
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| Killer's Kiss: Kubrick working on the cheap with a bunch of dummies |
Not satisfied with still photography, Kubrick moved on to the world of
motion pictures. After producing some short documentaries which included one
about a prize fight and another commissioned by a mariner’s union called The Seafarers, Kubrick struck out on his
own, first with an art house-like production called Fear and Desire, and a film noir called Killer's Kiss.
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| Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) wearing one of those damned masks in The Killing |
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| Johnny Clay about to find out why crime doesn't pay |
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| Cash in the wind |
However, after teaming up with producer James B. Harris, Kubrick began a
very memorable and productive career, starting with the 1956 movie The Killing. A gritty story adapted from
a novel called Clean Break, The Killing was about a
meticulously-planned racetrack heist that went horribly wrong, at least from
the perpetrator's angle. Starring Sterling Hayden ( a cinematic poster-boy for
Crime Doesn’t Pay), known to most as the corrupt Captain McClusky in The Godfather, in the first of his two
roles in Kubrick films (the other being the mad General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove), The Killing was the movie that put Kubrick on the map as a major Hollywood
player.
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| Bad start to Paths of Glory: Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) pissed off |
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| Sad ending to Paths of Glory; three innocent men executed |
In 1957, Kirk Douglas teamed up with Kubrick and made Paths of Glory, a searing anti-war film adapted from a novel which
was in turn based on the real-life mutinies of the French Army in 1917. Paths of Glory was such an indictment of
war in general and incompetent and stupid generals in particular that it was
banned in several countries, including (not surprisingly) France, until the
mid-70’s.
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| Kubrick on the set of Spartacus |
In 1960, Kubrick partnered with Douglas once again by directing the
epic film Spartacus, and that’s when
Kubrick’s disillusionment with Hollywood began. After being hired and quickly
fired by the notoriously unstable Marlon Brando for directing the movie One-Eyed Jacks, Kubrick vowed never
again to make a film that he did not have complete control over, which he was
able to do for the remainder of his career.
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| Kubrick and Sue Lyon making Lolita. Kubrick lost in thought |
Kubrick’s next project, released in 1962, was called Lolita, another film, like most of his other ones, adapted from a
book, in this case a controversial novel with the same name about a middle-aged
man who carries on an affair with an underaged girl. Kubrick made the film in
Britain, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Kubrick spent most of the rest of the 60’s by making what are arguably two
of his best known films: 1964’s Dr.
Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968.
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| YEEEEEEE HAWWWWWWW!!!!! Nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Rooskies! |
Dr. Strangelove originally started out as a taut and serious Cold
War thriller, but somehow during its development, it was morphed into a black
comedy.
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| HAL, the computer from hell |
2001: A Space Odyssey is Kubrick’s most enigmatic film, and over the
years he steadfastly refused to divulge any information whatsoever about what
exactly it’s supposed to mean.
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| Progress!!! |
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| Kubrick's one-and-only Oscar |
The cut scene between the proto-human triumphantly throwing a bone in the
air and the orbiting missile launcher is one of the most famous in cinematic
history. 2001: A Space Odyssey
yielded Kubrick’s only Academy Award (for special effects).
Kubrick, not a prolific filmmaker, made only five more films before his death
in 1999: A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Eyes
Wide Shut (1999).
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| Captive audience; Alex in A Clockwork Orange |
A Clockwork Orange
was hugely controversial when it was first released, and after several
incidents of violent crime allegedly inspired by the film, Kubrick took the
extraordinary step of pulling it from the theaters.
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| Well-lit by candles alone |
Barry Lyndon, a lavish period piece about a social climber,
was noteworthy, among other things, for its cinematography; Kubrick, ever the
consummate photographer, used camera lenses originally developed for NASA,
which allowed interior scenes to be lighted by nothing but candles, adding to
the mood and realism of the scenes.
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| We know this dude, don't we? |
The Shining, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the
same name, was Kubrick’s only foray into the horror genre, and “Heeere’s
Johnny” remains alive and well in pop culture.
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| "Got girlfriend Vietnam?" |
Full Metal Jacket was Kubrick’s entry into the explosion of
Vietnam War movies that appeared in the mid-to-late 80’s, although it actually
had been in development for some years before. Many people have said the first
part, U.S. Marine Corps basic training, should have been a film in and of
itself. I cannot comment on Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, because I’ve never seen it; from what I gather, it
received very mixed reviews.
To sum things up, Stanley Kubrick was obviously a very talented artist who
made movies that have had a considerable impact on popular culture. Lonely,
conflicted people and dehumanization seem to be recurring themes in most of his
films; for example, in 2001: A Space
Odyssey, the HAL 9000 computer acts like a sociopathic person, including lying
by commission and omission and committing deliberate murder and attempted
murder of the human crew of Discovery One,
while the two men on the ship not in hibernation are very bland and almost
robot-like, showing very little emotion.
In both A Clockwork Orange and Full
Metal Jacket, we see how individuals are transformed into somebody else,
who are both willingly and unwillingly turned into something abnormal. Masks
are featured in much of Kubrick’s work, which are consistent with his practice
of depicting altered identities.
Although Kubrick had a reputation of being a very demanding boss and a
detail-obsessed perfectionist, his films have numerous glaring flaws; for
example, during Dr.Strangelove, some
of the low-level shots are supposed to be from a B-52 bomber, but the
silhouette clearly shows a World War 2-era B-17, which was the plane actually
used by the second unit.
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| B-52 being shadowed...by a B-17? |
A similar mistake was made during the filming of Full Metal Jacket, when one scene has
the main character, Private Joker, riding in a USMC CH-34 helicopter (actually
a British Westland Wessex), but the shadow clearly shows a Bell Jet Ranger. I
know some would call that nit-picking.
Kubrick, in addition to his own movies, served as an uncredited consultant,
most notably on the 1977 James Bond film The
Spy Who Loved Me, where he advised the crew on how to light the huge
interior set of the villainous submarine-swallowing supertanker. Kubrick also
had several unrealized film projects, including one on Napoleon, and one that
was picked up by Steven Spielberg which eventually became the 2001 film Artificial Intelligence. Kubrick died of
a massive heart attack on March 7, 1999, leaving an impressive body of work
behind him.
