Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 - March 7, 1999) was an American film director born in The Bronx, New York City. His films are highly acclaimed for their technical perfection and deep, highly intellectual symbolism. As a director he was legendary for his relentless perfectionism, masterminding every scene down to the last detail and pushing those who worked with him to the very edge at times.
Stanley Kubrick in the late 1990's
Kubrick started his career as a professional photographer: he entered the field by selling amateur photos to New York's Look magazine, then was hired by the magazine as a full-time photographer. An avid moviegoer, Kubrick was convinced he could make films better than the ones he saw in the theaters, and he set himself to prove his claim right. His first feature films, Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss, caught the attention of Hollywood, and he won major acclaim for the classic film noir The Killing before making his mark with the award-winning Paths of Glory, a World War I drama. Kubrick's unique filmmaking style developed with these pictures, and his trademarks became clear: long takes, extensive tracking shots, facial expressions, and a cold, distant style that tended to drain the tenderness and humanity out of the stories his films told.
Kubrick's one attempt to adapt to the Hollywood "epic" film, Spartacus, is considered a great film itself, but Kubrick was at odds with both the cast (especially its star Kirk Douglas) and the crew. The battles waged over Spartacus convinced Kubrick that he would never work within the Hollywood system again, and he remained an outsider to the end of his life.
He moved to England in the early 1960s to make Lolita, and lived there for the rest of his life. He owned and resided at Childwickbury Manor in the district of St Albans. Much of the filming of his later movies involved careful reproduction of foreign locations, e.g., scenes in the Vietnam war film Full Metal Jacket were filmed at Beckton Gasworks. He was sometimes described as a recluse, but people who knew him have said that he spent much of his time in the company of others, while conducting his film work.
Kubrick was drawn to controversy in his choice of stories, as seen in his 1960 decision to film Lolita. He worked with the book's author, Vladimir Nabokov, to produce a screenplay that would allow the book to be filmed without being banned from theaters worldwide, and it was with Lolita that he discovered the talent of Peter Sellers. Kubrick asked Sellers to play four roles simultaneously in his next film, , and Sellers accepted (though he eventually only played three of those roles).
Dr. Strangelove is considered by many to be one of the greatest motion pictures of all time. Kubrick's decision to film the movie as a jet-black comedy was a daring risk, one that paid off handsomely for both himself and Columbia Pictures.
But one film did establish Kubrick as a master director: MGM's 1968 Cinerama production . Though the plot of the science fiction film was simple (the history of our evolution that begins at the dawn of time and ends in a possible future), it raised more questions than answers (although the 1984 sequel 2010, which Kubrick didn't direct, helped to tie up the loose ends left hanging by 2001). Still, Kubrick's adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke short story The Sentinel was groundbreaking, due to its use of visual effects (which Kubrick himself supervised). It was also notable for its use of classical music (including Also Sprach Zarathustra and The Blue Danube).
His next film, A Clockwork Orange (1971), was darker in tone than 2001 (and originally released with an "X" rating), but today is considered to be a masterpiece of science fiction cinema (like Kubrick's previous film). These three films have sparked an enormous amount of controversy over the years, and discussion concerning the themes, deeper meanings, and symbolism used by Kubrick to tell the stories in these movies continues to the present day.
Stantley Kubrick during the shooting of the Full Metal Jacket
However, Kubrick's next film Barry Lyndon, an adaptation of of a rogue novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, was not as widely embraced. Despite a number of passionate defenders, this film was considered by many viewers to be cold, slow-moving, and lifeless. After Barry Lyndon, Kubrick's filmmaking pace slowed considerably. He made only four more films in the next twenty-five years; but his reputation and his "mystique" were such that the premiere of each new Stanley Kubrick film was an event hailed by audiences worldwide.
The Shining (an adaptation of Stephen King's novel starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall) and Full Metal Jacket (one of several films in the 1980s which dealt with the Vietnam War) did not reach the heights of Dr. Strangelove and 2001 in the eyes of many critics, though they are still seen as exceptional examples of their genres, and they contain many Kubrick screen moments. After Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick spent years planning a film entitled A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, which he wanted longtime friend Steven Spielberg to direct; but he abandoned the project due to limited special effects technology of the time, and chose to film Eyes Wide Shut instead.
Eyes Wide Shut starred then-real-life husband-and-wife actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a suburban couple caught up in a sexual odyssey. The story is based on the book Traumnovelle by the Austrian novelist Arthur Schnitzler.
Kubrick was also a chess enthusiast, and he approached many of his projects from the point of view of a chess strategist.
Days after he had completed the filming of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick passed away, and was interred in Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire, England. Eyes Wide Shut was released to theaters as he had intended (although the home video version does digitally block out objectionable nudity). However, film scholars believe that if Kubrick had lived to see the film's release, he might have edited the film further; he had edited parts out of both 2001 and The Shining after each of those films had been released to theaters.
In the year 2001, Spielberg finished A.I., the film that had been Kubrick's final vision. The film received a lukewarm response from audiences, and gave Spielberg only his second box-office disappointment (after 1979's 1941). It was viewed by many as being more Spielberg's film than Kubrick's.
But Kubrick himself broke the boundaries on which major studio films are made, boundaries that other directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and David Lynch have since followed.
Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg were both fans & owners of the legendary Porsche 928, a luxury performance Supercar produced by Porsche from 1977-1995.
| Table of contents |
|
2 See also 3 External links |
Filmography
See also
External links