Stanley Kubrick

At 70 years old, Stanley Kubrick has this physical status:

Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer.

He is often cited as one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history.

His films, which are mainly adaptations of novels or short stories, span a number of genres and are noted for their realism, dark humor, sophisticated set designs, and evocative use of music. Kubrick was born in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945.

After graduating from high school, he earned average marks but showed a keen interest in literature, photography, and film from a young age, and he learned how to produce and direct.

He began making short films on a shoestring budget and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing, for United Artists in 1956 after working as a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas, the war film Paths of Glory (1957) and the epic epic Spartacus (1960).

Early life

Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, on July 26, 1928, to a Jewish family. He was the first of two children of Jacob Leonard Kubrick (June 21, 1902 – October 19, 1985), known as Jack or Jacques, and his partner Sadie Gertrude Kubrick (née Perez) (born October 28, 1903 – April 23, 1985) known as Gert. Barbara Mary Kubrick was born in May 1934. Jack Kubrick, whose parents and paternal grandparents were of Polish-Jewish and Romanian-Jewish origins, was a New York homeopathic physician who graduated from New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1927, the same year he married Kubrick's mother, the child of Austrian-Jewish immigrants. Kubrick's great-grandfather, Hersh Kubrick, arrived on Ellis Island by sea on December 27, 1899, leaving his wife and two young children, one of whom was Stanley's grandfather Elias, dead, to begin a new life with a younger woman. In 1902, Elias Kubrick was the first to follow. The Kubricks lived in the Bronx at Stanley's birth. Kubrick's parents married in a Jewish synagogue, but he later professed an atheistic interpretation of the universe. His father was a surgeon, and the family was extremely wealthy by West Bronx standards.

Kubrick began attending Public School 3 in the Bronx right after his sister's birth and then migrated to Public School 90 in June 1938. His intelligence was found to be higher than average, but his attendance was poor. He began reading Greek and Roman myths and Grimm brothers' fables, which "instilled in him a lifelong link with Europe." He spent the majority of Saturdays of the summer watching the New York Yankees and then photographing two boys watching the game in an attempt for Look magazine to imitate his own childhood fascination with baseball. When Kubrick was 12, his father Jack taught him chess. Kubrick's fascination with the game piqued lifelong, appearing in many of Kubrick's films. Kubrick, who later became a member of the United States Chess Federation, said that chess helped him develop "patience and discipline" in making decisions. When Kubrick was 13, his father bought him a Graflex camera, sparking a fascination with still photography. Marvin Traub, a neighbor who expressed his love for photography, befriended him. Traub had his own darkroom, where he and the young Kubrick would spend hours perusing photographs and watching the chemicals "magically make images on photographic paper." The two engaged in a number of photographic exhibits for which they walked the streets looking for new subject matter to photograph and spent time in local cinemas researching films. Weegee (Arthur Fellig), a freelance photographer, had a major influence on Kubrick's rise as a photographer; Kubrick later hired Fellig as the special stills photographer for Dr. Strangelove (1964). Kubrick, a teen, was also interested in jazz and briefly attempted to work as a drummer.

Kubrick attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. Despite being a mediocre student with a 67/D+ average, he joined the school's photography club, which allowed him to photograph the school's activities in their magazine. Kubrick, who was introverted and shy, had a poor attendance record and often skipped class to see double-feature films. He graduated in 1945, but his low grades, as well as the growing demand for college admissions from veterans of the Second World War, stifled any hope of higher education. Kubrick's education and American schooling as a whole were disdainfully discussed, and he maintained that colleges were ineffective in stimulating critical thinking and student interest later in life. His father was angry at his son's inability to achieve the excellence in education of which he suspected Stanley was absolutely capable. Stanley was also encouraged to read from the family library at home, while Stanley was encouraged to pursue photography as a serious hobby.

Personal life

Kubrick married Toba Metz, a caricaturist, on May 29, 1948, when he was 19 years old. The couple married in Greenwich Village and divorced three years later in 1951. In 1952, he married Ruth Sobotka, an Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer. They lived in East Village, New York City, beginning in 1952, married in January 1955, and then moved to Hollywood in July 1955, where she appeared briefly as a ballet dancer in Kubrick's film, Killer's Kiss (1955). She appeared in The Killing (1956), the following year, she was art director for his film. In 1957, the two families married.

Kubrick met and romanced German actress Christiane Harlan, who played a small but memorable role in the film, during the Munich production of Paths of Glory in early 1957. Kubrick married Harlan in 1958, and the couple stayed together for 40 years until his death in 1999. They had two children together, Anya Renata (born September 6, 1959 – July 7, 2009) and Vivian Vanessa (born August 5, 1960). They moved to 316 South Camden Drive in Beverly Hills in 1959 with Harlan's daughter, Katherina, age six. They lived in New York City during which Christiane studied art at the Art Students League of New York, later becoming an independent artist. In 1961, the couple moved to Lolita, and Kubrick hired Peter Sellers to star in his new film, Dr. Strangelove. Sellers were unable to leave the United Kingdom, so Kubrick made Britain his permanent home after that. Kubrick was able to leave the Hollywood system and its public relations office, and he and Christiane were alarmed by the rise in brutality in New York City.

The Kubricks bought Abbots Mead on Barnet Lane, just south of England's Elstree/Borehamwood studio complex. Kubrick worked almost exclusively from this home for 14 years, where he studied, invented special effects techniques, created ultra-low light lenses for specially modified cameras, edited, post-produced, broadcast, and diligently managed all aspects of four of his films. Kubrick moved to Childwickwick Manor in Hertfordshire, a mainly 18th-century stately home that was once owned by a wealthy racehorse owner, about 30 km (50 km) north of London and a 10-minute drive from his old home in Abbotts Mead. Kubrick's new home became a "perfect family business," as Christiane put it, and Kubrick converted the stables into additional production rooms besides those inside the house that he used for editing and storage.

Kubrick, a workaholic, never took a vacation or left England during the 40 years before his death. Kubrick's tightly held way of life and the search for anonymity has resulted in rumors of his reclusiveness, which are similar to those of Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, and J. D. Salinger. "It's a complete loss as a recluse," Michael Herr, Kubrick's co-screenwriter on Full Metal Jacket, who knew him well, considers his "reclusiveness" to be myth: unless you believe that a recluse is simply someone who rarely leaves his house. Stanley met a lot of people, but it didn't mean the majority of this conviviality would have gone on without having a phone." LoBrutto claims that one of the reasons he became a recluse was that he decided to remain close to his home, but that there are only three places on the planet where he could produce high-quality films with the appropriate technical experience and equipment: Los Angeles, New York City, or around London. He disliked living in Los Angeles and thought London was a reputable film production center to New York City.

Kubrick was described by Norman Lloyd as "very dark, sort of a glowering type who was very serious." Marisa Berenson, a Barry Lyndon actress, fondly recalled: "He had a lot of tenderness in him, and he was passionate about his work." His awesome intelligence was apparent, but he also had a sarcastic sense of humor. He was a timid person and self-protective, but the thing that pulled him twenty-four hours of the day was a bottle of paint." Kubrick was devoted to machines and industrial equipment, to the point that his wife Christiane once said, "Stanley will be content with eight tape recorders and one pair of pants." Kubrick had obtained a pilot's license in August 1947, but some have expressed fear of flying as a result of an incident in the early 1950s when a colleague was killed in a plane crash. According to Duncan, Kubrick had been sent the charred remains of his camera and notebooks, which had traumatized him for life. Doctors and medicine were also mistrusting Kubrick.

Kubrick died in his sleep on March 7, 1999, six days after deciding a final cut of Eyes Wide Shut for his family and the actors. His funeral was held five days later at Childwickbury Manor, with only close friends and relatives present, totaling around 100 people. A mile away from the entrance gate, the media were kept a mile away from the front door. Alexander Walker, a photographer who attended the funeral, described it as a "family farewell [much like an English picnic], with cellists, clarinetists, and singers performing music from many of his favorite classical works. The Jewish prayer that was traditionally said by mourners and in other contexts was recited. A few of his obituaries related to his Jewish roots. Terry Semel, Jan Harlan, Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, and Tom Cruise were among those who gave eulogies. He was buried next to his family tree on the estate. "The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young." His wife Christiane included one of Oscar Wilde's favorite quotes from her book "Dedicated to Kubrick.

Source

Photographic career

Kubrick was selected as a high school photographer while still in high school. He attended evening classes at the City College of New York in the mid-1940s, since he was unable to gain admission to day session classes at colleges. He eventually sold a photographic series to Look magazine, which was published on June 26, 1945. Kubrick added to his income by playing chess "for quarters" in Washington Square Park and various Manhattan chess clubs.

In 1946, he became an apprentice photographer for Look and then a full-time staff photographer. G. Warren Schloat, Jr., a young photographer for the magazine at the time, said Kubrick had the talent to make it as a director in Hollywood. He didn't say much. He was thin, skinny, and kind of poor, as we all were." Kubrick became well-known for his story-telling in photographs. His first, which was published on April 16, 1946, was entitled "A Short Story from a Movie Balcony" and portrayed a fight between a man and a woman, during which the man is slapped in the chest, caught the man completely by surprise. In another project, 18 photographs of various people waiting in a dental office were taken. According to a retrospective review, Kubrick's involvement in capturing people and their feelings in mundane environments has increased dramatically. In 1948, he was sent to Portugal to film a travel piece and wrote the Ringling Bros. & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Florida.

Kubrick, a boxing enthusiast, began photographing boxing matches for the magazine. On January 18, 1949, his earliest, "Prizefighter," was published, capturing a boxing match and the events leading up to it, which featured Walter Cartier. He published the photo essay "Chicago City of Extremes" in Look on April 2, 1949, which showed his talent early on for generating atmosphere with imagery. The following year, "Working Debutante – Betsy von Furstenberg," the magazine's photographer, published his photo essay, which featured a Pablo Picasso portrait of Angel F. de Soto in the background. Kubrick was also assigned to photograph several jazz artists, from Frank Sinatra and Erroll Garner to George Lewis, Eddie Condon, Phil Napoleon, Jerome Condon, Papa Celestin, Papa Celestin, Alphonse Picou, Sharkey Bonano, and others.

On May 28, 1948, Kubrick married Toba Metz, a high-school sweetheart. They lived in a tiny apartment off the shores of Greenwich Village on 36 West 16th Street, just north of Greenwich Village. Kubrick began attending film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and New York City cinemas during this period. He was inspired by director Max Ophüls' complex, fluid camerawork, whose films inspired Kubrick's design style, and by director Elia Kazan, who has been praised as America's "best director" at the time, with his ability to "performing miracles" with his actors. Kubrick began to obsess about the art of filmmaking, and one friend, David Vaughan, said Kubrick would scrutinize the film at the theater when it went silent, and that people would return to reading his newspaper when it first began. He spent hours reading books on film theory and writing notes. Sergei Eisenstein and Arthur Rothstein, the photographic technical director of Look magazine, were among the creative minds who inspired him.

Film career

Kubrick expressed his passion for film with his school friend Alexander Singer, who after graduating from high school with the intention of directing a film adaptation of Homer's Iliad. Kubrick learned it could cost $40,000 to produce a good short film, but it was not affordable for him because he worked in the company's headquarters. He had $1500 in savings and made a few short documentaries aided by Singer's encouragement. He began learning everything he could about filmmaking on his own, including calling film suppliers, laboratories, and equipment rental houses.

Kubrick's first attempt at filming Walter Cartier, a boxer who had shot and written about for Look magazine a year before. On the Fight, he rented a camera and produced a 16-minute black-and-white film. Kubrick found the funds on his own to finance it. He had considered asking Montgomery Clift to narrate it, but decided on CBS news veteran Douglas Edwards. According to Paul Duncan, the film was "particularly successful for a first film" and that a backward tracking shot was used to film a scene in which Cartier and his brother march toward the camera, which later became one of Kubrick's signature camera movements. Later in the filming, Vincent Cartier, Walter Cartier's brother and boss, discussed his Kubrick encounters. "Stanley was a stoic, impassive, but imaginative type of person with a lot of energy and imagination," he said. He commanded respect in a quiet, shy manner. You did what he wanted and captivated you. Anybody who worked with Stanley did exactly what Stanley wanted." Kubrick spent $3900 on making it and sold it to RKO-Pathé for $4000, the highest price the company had ever paid for a short film at the time, when it was added by singer's buddy Gerald Fried. Kubrick's first attempt at filmmaking was positive because he seemed to have been forced to do the bulk of the work, and he later declared that the "best education in film is to make one."

Kubrick left his job at Look and visited professional filmmakers in New York City, asking numerous questions about the filmmaking process, inspired by this early success. He said he was given the opportunity to become a filmmaker because of the number of bad movies he had seen during this period, but he claims he would make a better film than that." He began making Flying Padre (1951), a film in which Reverend Fred Stadtmueller, a journey who flies 1,500 miles to visit his 11 churches. The film was originally supposed to be called "Sky Pilot," a play on the slang word for a priest. The priest appears at a funeral service, confronts a teenage girl, and makes an emergency flight to help a sick mother and her baby into an ambulance during the course of the film. Several of the photos from and of the plane in Flying Padre have been echoed in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with the footage of the spacecraft, as well as a series of close-ups on the faces of people attending the funeral, with Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Ivan the Terrible (1944/1958).

The Flying Padre was followed by The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film, shot for the Seafarers International Union in June 1953. It depicted the political union's logistics in a democratic union, but it honed more on seafaring's amenities rather than the legislation. Kubrick used a dolly shot to capture the life of the seafarer's families in the film; this kind of shot would later be a signature technique. Paul Hall, secretary-treasurer of the SIU Atlantic and gulf district, chatting with union members resembles scenes from Eisenstein's Strike (1925) and October (1928). Kubrick's only living documentary films, along with Flying Padre and The Seafarers, were among his day's commemorated documentary works; some historians suspect him of making others.

Kubrick's first feature film, Fear and Desire (1953), was originally funded by his friend Howard Sackler and published under the name Fear and Desire (1953). Martin Perveler, a Los Angeles pharmacy owner, invested a further $9000 on the condition that he be credited as the film's executive producer. Kubrick brought together several actors and a small crew totaling 14 people (five actors, five crewmen, and four others to assist with transporting the equipment) and departed to the San Gabriel Mountains in California for a five-week low-budget shooting. It was later renamed The Shape of Fear before being named Fear and Desire, a fictional allegory of a team of soldiers who survive a plane crash and are trapped behind enemy lines in a war. During the film, one of the soldiers becomes infatuated with an attractive girl in the woods and binds her to a tree. This scene is known for its close-ups on the actress's face. Kubrick intended Fear and Desire to be a silent picture in order to guarantee low production costs; the added sounds, effects, and music ultimately raised production costs to around $53,000, much above the budget. Producer Richard de Rochemont had him removed on the condition that he assist in the development of a five-part television series about Abraham Lincoln, which was shot on location in Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Fear and Desire was a commercial failure, but after its release, several positive comments were shared. Kubrick's professionalism as a photographer shone through in the film, including the wrath of their lust for a gruesome teenage soldier and the pinioned girl he is guarding, according to critics like the New York Times' reviewer. Mark Van Doren, a Columbia University scholar, was blown by the scenes involving the girl tied to the tree, remarking that it would continue to be a "beautiful, scary, and strange" sequence that portrayed Kubrick's remarkable talent and promised his future glory. Kubrick himself expressed shame with Fear and Desire later in life, and the film's designers continued to print copies of the film out of circulation. Kubrick almost killed his actor with poisonous gasses during the filming.

Kubrick began experimenting on new boxing film concepts after Fear and Affection. Kubrick's first film was unsuccessful in terms of commercialization, but he and Howard O. Sackler began a film noir script. Kill Me, Kill Me, and then The Nymph and Maniac, Killer's Kiss (1955) is a 67-minute film noir about a young heavyweight boxer's relationship with a woman being assaulted by her criminal boss. It was privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends, with some $40,000 from Bronx pharmacist Morris Bousse to alleviate Fear and Desire. Kubrick started shooting in Times Square and was often filmed during the shooting process, playing with cinematography and investigating the use of unconventional angles and photos. He started recording the sound on location but soon ran into issues with shadows from the microphone booms, restricting camera movement. It was a costly decision to drop the sound in favour of imagery; after 12-14 weeks shooting the film, Martin Scorsese's Blackmail (1929) directly inspired the film with the painting laughing at a woman, and Kubrick's inventive shooting angles and dramatic shots in Killer's Kiss influenced Raging Bull (1980). "Stanley's a mysterious person," actress Irene Kane, who appeared on Killer's Kiss, wrote. He believes that movies should move, with at least some dialogue, and that he is all about sex and sadness. Killer's Kiss had limited commercial success and made little money in comparison to its $75,000. Critics have lauded the film's camerawork, but its acting and plot are generally regarded as mediocre.

Kubrick met producer James B. Harris, who called Kubrick "the most brilliant, most creative individual I've ever come in contact with." In 1955, the two formed the Harris-Kubrick Pictures Corporation. Harris bought the rights to Lionel White's book Clean Break for $10,000 and Kubrick wrote the script, but Kubrick's suggestion, Jim Thompson, worked as the film's scriptist, The Killing (1956), about a meticulously planned racetrack robbery gone wrong. Sterling Hayden, who had impressed Kubrick with his appearance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), appeared in the film.

Kubrick and Harris moved to Los Angeles and worked with the Jaffe Agency to shoot the film, which became Kubrick's first full-length feature film shot with a professional cast and crew. Kubrick would not be allowed to be both the director and cinematographer, according to the union in Hollywood, which resulted in the recruiting of veteran cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Kubrick decided to waive his fee for the shoot, which was shot in 24 days on a $330,000 budget. During the shooting, he clashed with Ballard, and Kubrick threatened to fire Ballard as a result of a camera controversy, despite being aged only 27 and 20 years old Ballard's junior. Kubrick was "cold and detached," Hayden recalled. Irmo is a mechanical engineer who is still positive. I've worked with very few directors who are so talented.

The Killing, which was unsuccessful in getting a proper distribution in the United States, earned no money and was only promoted at the last minute as a second sequel to the Western film Bandido. (1996). Several modern commentators praised the film, with a Time reviewer comparing the film's camerawork to Orson Welles'. Today, analysts generally agree that The Killing was one of Kubrick's finest films; its nonlinear narrative and clinical execution also had a major influence on later crime filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino. Dore Schary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was awed by his work, and Kubrick and Harris were able to write, produce, and produce a film that eventually became Paths of Glory (1957).

Paths of Glory, set during World War I, is based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 antiwar book Paths of Glory. Schary was aware of the novel but said that MGM would not finance another war movie given their support for the anti-war film The Red Badge of Courage (1951). After MGM's firing Schary, MGM's big shake-up, Kubrick and Harris managed to compel Kirk Douglas to play Colonel Dax. Douglas, in turn, committed Harris-Kubrick Pictures to a three-picture co-production contract with his film production company, Bryna Productions, which has received a financing and distribution contract for Paths of Glory and two subsequent films with United Artists. The film, shot in Munich from March 1957, follows a French army unit ordered on an impossible mission and follows a war trial of three soldiers arbitrarily chosen for misconduct. At Court Martial, Dax is charged with the defense of the man. Kubrick arranged six cameras one after another along the boundary of no-man's land, with each camera recording a specific spot and numbered, and giving each of the hundreds of extras a number for the region in which they would die. Kubrick used an Arriflex camera for the fight, zooming in on Douglas. Paths of Glory was Kubrick's first commercial success, and he established him as a young and burgeoning young filmmaker. Critics lauded the film's unsentimental, spare, and unvarnished combat scenes as well as its raw, black-and-white cinematography. Despite the celebrations, the Christmas announcement date was criticized, and Europe was divided on the issue. The film was banned in France from 1974 for its "unflattering" portrayal of the French military, and the Swiss Army barred it from entering France until 1970.

I Stole $16 million, especially for Stanley Kubrick and James B. Harris, who attended Paths of Glory's world premiere in Germany in October 1957. The picture was supposed to be the second in the Bryna Productions and Harris-Kubrick Pictures co-production agreement, with Kubrick to write and direct, Harris to co-produce and actor, and Douglas to co-produce and act. Gavin Lambert, the story editor for I Stole $16,000,000, and Kubrick's script titled God Fears Man was never shot, but the film was never shot.

Marlon Brando called Kubrick and asked him to produce a film version of Charles Neider's The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones starring Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. "Stanley is remarkably perceptive and delicately attuned to people," Brando was impressed. He has a sharp mind and is a prolific thinker, not a repeater, not a fact gatherer. He digests what he learns and brings to a new project, both from an original point of view and a reserved passion. The two writers were coding for six months, beginning by Sam Peckinpah, who was then unknown. Several debates erupted over the project, and Kubrick distanced himself from what would become One-Eyed Jacks (1961).

Kubrick received a phone call from Kirk Douglas in February 1959 asking him to order Spartacus (1960), based on the ancient Spartacus and the Third Servile War. Douglas obtained the rights to the book by Howard Fast and blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who began writing the script. Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman general and politician, was produced by Douglas, who also appeared as Spartacus, as his adversary, Laurence Olivier. Douglas fired director Anthony Mann after he fired Kubrick for a reported $150,000 fee to take over the direction. Kubrick had already produced four feature films by 31, and this was his biggest by far, with a cast of over 10,000 and a budget of $6 million. At the time, this was the most expensive film ever made in America, and Kubrick became the youngest director in Hollywood history to make an epic. It was the first time Kubrick filmed with anamorphic 35mm horizontal Super Technirama process to get ultra-thinfinite, which allowed him to film large panoramic scenes, one of which featured thousands of Spanish soldiers from Spain, which included 8,000 troops from Spain representing the Roman army.

During the filming of Spartacus, disagreements broke out. Kubrick lamented about not having complete creative control over the artistic aspects of the project, while insisting on improvising often during the process. Kubrick and Douglas were also at odds over the script, with Kubrick enraged Douglas after he deleted only two of Kubrick's lines from the first 30 minutes. Spartacus made $14.6 million at the box office in its first run despite the on-set challenges. Kubrick was established as a major director, receiving six Academy Award nominations and winning four; it left him convinced that if such a difficult project, he might do something. Spartacus also signals the end of Kubrick and Douglas' professional relationship.

Kubrick and Harris decided to film Lolita (1962) in England due to certain restrictions placed on the film by developers Warner Bros., and the fact that the Eady scheme allowed producers to write off the costs if 80% of the crew was British. Rather, they signed a $1 million contract with Eliot Hyman's Associated Artists Productions, as well as a clause that gave them the artistic liberty they desired. Lolita, Kubrick's first attempt at black comedy, was a recreation of Vladimir Nabokov's book of the same name: The tale of a middle-aged college professor becoming infatuated with a 12-year-old teen. According to film critic Gene Youngblood, "Lolita, starring Peter Sellers, James Mason, Shelley Winters, and Sue Lyon, was a transitional film for Kubrick, "marking the change from a naturalistic cinema to the surrealistic film." When filming him with three cameras, Kubrick was impressed by actor Peter Sellers' range and gave him one of his first opportunities to improvise a lot during shooting.

Kubrick shot Lolita over 88 days at Elstree Studios, which cost the studio from October 1960 to March 1961. Kubrick often clashed with Shelley Winters, who found "very difficult" and demanding, and nearly dismissed at one point. Lolita was Kubrick's first film to spark controversy, because of the provocative plot, he was eventually forced to comply with censorship and delete a significant portion of the Mason's Lolita's erotic element, which had been missing in Nabokov's novel. On its first run, the film was not a big critic or commercial success, grossing $3.7 million at the box office. Lolita's sincere praise has been long-awaited.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Kubrick's next venture was Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), a satirical black comedy. Kubrick became preoccupied with nuclear war as the Cold War unfolded in the 1950s, and even considered heading to Australia because he feared that New York City would be a likely target for the Russians. He read more than 40 military and political research books on the subject, and came to the conclusion that "nobody really knew anything and that the whole situation was ridiculous."

Kubrick and its writer, Peter George, worked on the script after buying the rights to the novel Red Alert. It was originally intended as a serious political thriller, but Kubrick decided that a "serious treatment" of the subject would not be credible, and that certain of the book's most salient points would be fodder for comedy. The film should be serious, according to Kubrick's longtime producer and friend James B. Harris, and the two sides parted ways, amicably over this conflict—Harris continuing to produce and direct the serious cold-war thriller The Bedford Incident. Kubrick and Red Alert author George reworked the script as a "Delicate Balance of Terror," a movie that was originally titled "The Delicate Balance of Terror," in which the Red Alert's story was portrayed as an alien intelligence film-within-a-film, but Kubrick and Red Alert's plot was also dismissed, and Kubrick decided to make the film a "extraordinary black comedy."

According to film scholar Terry Southern, Kubrick hired noted journalist and satirical author Terry Southern to turn the script into its final form, a black comedy, brimming with sexual innuence, a film in which Kubrick's talents were seen as a "unique kind of absurdist." Southern made significant contributions to the final script and was co-credited (above Peter George) in the film's opening titles, but Kubrick and Peter George's public involvement in the project led to a public divide between Kubrick and George, who later claimed in a letter to Life magazine that Kubrick's brief but brief (November 16 to December 28, 1962) involvement in the project was being downplayed, despite Kubrick's claims that Kubrick's (November 16)

Kubrick discovered that Dr. Strangelove, the "first important visual effects crew in the world," would be impossible to make in the United States for various technological and political reasons, leading him to move production to England. After Kubrick spent eight months editing it, it was shot in 15 weeks, it came to an end in April 1963. Peter Sellers opted to work with Kubrick once more and ended up in three different roles in the film.

The film brought up a lot of controversy and mixed views upon its release. While Robert Brustein of Out of This World said in a February 1970 issue that it was a "juvenal satire," the New York Times film critics feared it would be a "discredit and even contempt for our whole defense establishment." Kubrick responded to the criticism by saying: "A satirist is someone who has a pessimistic view of human life but who also has the confidence to make some sort of a sarcastic joke out of it." However cruel that prank behemoth might have been. The film is considered one of the best comedy films ever made, with a near-perfect 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 91 reviews as of November 2020. The American Film Institute named it as the 39th-greatest American film and the third-greatest American comedy film of all time, and the sixth-best comedy film of all time in 2010.

Kubrick spent five years on A Space Odyssey (1968), having been greatly impressed by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke's book Childhood's End (1968), about a superior alien race that aids mankind in destroying their old selves. Kubrick suggested that he write The Sentinel, a monolith found on the Moon that warns aliens of humanity, after meeting Clarke in New York City in April 1964. Clarke began writing 2001: A Space Odyssey and partnered with Kubrick on a screenplay this year. In two parallel intersecting stories on two different time scales, the film's theme, the emergence of one intelligence by another, is explored. One depicts evolutionary transitions of man from ape to "star child" as man is reborn into a new life, each step guided by an enigmatic alien intelligence embodied only in its artifacts: a series of apparently indestructible eons-old black monoliths. The enemy in space is a supercomputer running the spaceship, who is described as being "far, far more human, more amusing, and conceivably better than anything else that may arise from this far-seeing endeavor."

Kubrick extensively researched for the film, paying particular attention to accuracy and detail in determining what the future may look like. He was given permission by NASA to observe the spacecraft being used in the Ranger 9 mission for accuracy. Filming began on December 29, 1965, with the discovery of the monolith on the moon's surface, and a film was shot in Namib Desert in early 1967, with the ape scenes completed later this year. The special effects team continued to film until the end of the year, costing the film $10.5 million. 2001: A Space Odyssey was born as a cinerama spectacle and was photographed in Super Panavision 70, giving the viewer a "dazzling mix of imagination and science" through ground-breaking effects that earned Kubrick his first personal award, an Academy Award for Visual Effects. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Kubrick discussed the film's philosophy: "The film's plot represented the search for God on the deepest psychological level, and then postulates what is little less than a scientific definition of God." The film revolves around this metaphysical interpretation, and realistic hardware and documentary sentiments about all were required in order to undermine your built-in resistance to the poetical theory."

A Space Odyssey was not a hit among critics who sluggish pace, slowed pacing, and a seemingly impenetrable storyline when it was released in 1968. The film seemed to defy genre convention, much like no science-fiction film before it, and clearly different from any of Kubrick's earlier works. Kubrick was particularly outraged by Pauline Kael's scathing review, who called it "the greatest amateur movie of them all," with Kubrick doing "absolutely every stupid thing he's ever wanted to do." Despite mixed contemporary critical analyses, 2001 gained traction and brought in $31 million worldwide by the end of 1972. It is now one of the most popular and most influential films ever made, and it is a staple on All Time Top ten lists. Steven Spielberg has referred to it as "one of the most admired and discussed creations in cinema history," Baxter's film "the big bang of his film making generation." Stanley Kubrick is "ranked as a pure artist among the masters of cinema" by biographer Vincent LoBrutto.

Kubrick, who completed 2001: A Space Odyssey, wanted a project that would be shot quickly on a more modest budget. At the end of 1969, he settled on A Clockwork Orange (1971), a fight against crime and experimental rehabilitation by law enforcement agencies, based on Alex's character (portrayed by Malcolm McDowell). While working on Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick had a copy of Anthony Burgess' book of the same name as Terry Southern, but decided against it because it was too difficult to comprehend. In 1969, the decision to make a film about youth reflected contemporary fears; the New Hollywood movement was producing a slew of films that depicted youth's sexuality and rebelliousness. On a budget of £2 million, a Clockwork Orange was shot from 1970 to 1974. Kubrick dropped CinemaScope in filming, finding that the 1.66:1 widescreen version was a "acceptable compromise between spectacle and intimacy" that "increased the quality of his compositions" and that his "rigorously symmetrical framing" enhanced his composition's "intuitive framing." The film heavily features "pop erotica" of the time, including a massive white plastic set of male genitals, as well as contemporary furniture, which Kubrick intended to give it a "slightly futuristic" appearance. McDowell's role in Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968) was vital to his character as Alex, and Kubrick claimed that if McDowell had been unavailable, he may not have directed the film.

A Clockwork Orange became one of the most controversial films of its time, as part of a burgeoning debate about violence and its glorification of cinema. On its debut in both the United Kingdom and the United States right before Christmas 1971, it received an X rating, or certificate, but many commentators saw more of the film as satirical and less violent than Straw Dogs, which had been released a month before. Following a string of copycat assaults based on the film, Kubrick personally pulled the film out of release in the United Kingdom after receiving death threats; it was therefore uninhibited legally in the UK until after Kubrick's death and not re-released until 2000. The film's censor, John Trevelyan, found A Clockwork Orange to be "perhaps the most innovative piece of cinematic art I've ever seen" and said it to be a "intellective argument rather than a sadistic spectacle" in its depiction of violence, although many would not agree. Despite the negative media hype surrounding the film, A Clockwork Orange received four Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Editing, and The New York Film Critics Circle rated it as the Best Film of 1971. "I think Stanley Kubrick is the best American film-maker of the year," William Friedkin said of the French Connection last year. In fact, not just this year, but the best, period, period."

Barry Lyndon (1975) is a sequel to William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a picaresque book about an 18th-century Irish rogue and social climber. Warner Bros. founder John Calley decided to invest $2.5 million into the film in 1972 on the condition that Kubrick counsel major Hollywood stars to ensure success. Kubrick and his art department undertook an extensive amount of study on the 18th century, as in previous films. Numerous photographs of locations and artwork in particular were taken, and paintings were faithfully copied from the works of the period's greatest masters. The film was shot on location in Ireland starting in 1973 and costing $11 million with a cast and crew of 170. The decision to shoot in Ireland stemmed from the fact that the city retaining a number of buildings from the 18th century period, which England lacked. From the start, the operation was rocky, flooded with heavy rain and political strife affecting Northern Ireland at the time. After Kubrick suffered from death threats from the IRA in 1974, he and his family escaped Ireland with a ferry from Dn Laoghaire under an assumed name and restarted filming in England.

Barry Lyndon was the film that made Kubrick famous for its scrupulous attention to detail, according to Baxter, who often wanted twenty or thirty retakes of the same scene to refine his art. The cinematography and lighting techniques used by Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott in Barry Lyndon were often considered to be his most realistic-looking film. Scenes were taken within with a specially built high-speed Zeiss camera lens that were originally designed for NASA and later used in satellite photography. Many scenes were only lit with candlelight, resulting in two-dimensional, diffused-light photographs reminiscent of 18th-century paintings. Allen Daviau, a cinematographer, claims that the technique gives the audience a way to see the characters and scenes as they would have been seen by people at the time. Many of the fight scenes were shot with a hand-held camera, resulting in a "sense of documentary realism and immediacy."

Barry Lyndon attracted a large audience in France, but the American market was still suffering, not even close to the $30 million Warner Bros. needed to succeed. Some American critics and audiences were dissatisfied with Barry Lyndon's three hours of fame, but the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Musical Score, more than any other Kubrick film. Barry Lyndon's name has risen over the years, and it is now considered one of Kubrick's finest film, both among filmmakers and reviewers. Several research, including The Village Voice (1999), Sight & Sound (2002), and Time (2005) have rated it as one of the best films ever made. Based on 64 ratings, Rotten Tomatoes has a 94% rating as of March 2019. Roger Ebert described it as "one of the most beautiful films ever made," in every frame a Kubrick film: technically stunning, emotionally distant, and remorseless in its search of human goodness."

The Shining, which was published in 1980, was based on Stephen King's book of the same name. Jack Nicholson plays a writer who works as a winter caretaker of a remote hotel in the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife, Shelley Duvall, and their young son, who has paraphrasedoutput, spend the winter together. During their stay, they investigate Jack's descent into madness and the hotel's apparent supernatural horrors. Kubrick allowed his actors to extend the script and even improvise on occasion, and as a result, Nicholson was in charge of the 'Here's Johnny!' line and the scene in which he's sitting at the typewriter and unleashes his rage against his wife. Kubrick used to order up to seven or eight retakes of the same scene. Duvall, whom Kubrick intentionally isolated and argued with, was obliged to perform the exhausting baseball bat scene 127 times. Danny (Danny Lloyd) and Halloran's kitchen scene (Scatman Crothers) ran to 148 takes in the bar scene, with the ghostly bartender firing 36 times. The Overlook Hotel's aerial photographs were shot at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, Oregon, while the hotel's interiors were shot at Elstree Studios in England between May 1978 and April 1979. All of the film's sets were made, and the lighting of them was a massive undertaking that required four months of electrical wiring. Kubrick made extensive use of the newly introduced Steadicam, a weight-balanced camera that allowed for smooth hand-held camera movement in scenes where a conventional camera track was impractical. It was the first photograph to use its full potential, according to Garrett Brown, Steadicam's developer. The Shining was not Kubrick's only horror film to which he had been attached; despite once advising a friend that he had long wished to "make the world's scariest movie," which involved a sequence of episodes that would play on the audience's nightmares.

After witnessing the audience's euphoria in cinemas at the film's climax, five days after its unveiling on May 23, 1980, Kubrick ordered the cancellation of a final scene in which hotel manager Ullman (Barry Nelson) visits Wendy (Shelley Duvall) in hospital. The Shining began with strong box office receipts, earning $1 million in the first weekend and $30.9 million in America by the end of the year. The original critical reaction was split, with King detesting the film and dismissing Kubrick. The Shining is now considered a horror film by the American Film Institute, and it has been named as the 27th best thriller film of all time.

In 1980, Kubrick met author Michael Herr by a mutual friend, John le Carré, and became interested in his book Dispatches about the Vietnam War. Herr had recently written Martin Sheen's narrator for Apocalypse Now (1979). Kubrick was also intrigued by Gustav Hasford's book The Short-Timers. Kubrick began working with both Herr and Hasford separately on a script, with the intention to shoot what would become full metal jacket (1987). Hasford eventually found his book to be "brutally true" and decided to film a film that closely follows the novel. The film was shot within a 30-mile radius of his house between August 1985 and September 1986, much later than expected as Kubrick stopped operation for five months after a near-fatal accident involving Lee Ermey. In Beckton, the ruined city of Hu was depicted as a derelict gasworks, which made the film physically different from other Vietnam War films. Around 200 palm trees were imported via 40-foot trailers from North Africa at a cost of £1000 per tree, and thousands of plastic plants were ordered from Hong Kong to supply the film's foliage. Kubrick said he made the film look realistic by using natural light and also created a "newsel effect" by making the Steadicam shots less consistent, which reviewers and commentators believed contributed to the film's bleakness and seriousness.

According to critic Michel Ciment, the film had some of Kubrick's signature features, including his selection of ironic music, depictions of men as dehumanized, and a commitment to extreme detail to achieve realisticity. United States Marines patrol the remains of an abandoned and demolished city in a later scene, performing the theme tune to the Mickey Mouse Club as a sardonic counterpoint. The film opened in June 1987, grossing over $30 million in the first 50 days alone, but the success of Oliver Stone's Platoon had a huge influence on the film, which had been released a year before. Matthew Modine, co-star of Kubrick, wrote: "The first half of FMJ is fantastic." Then, the film degenerates into a masterpiece." Roger Ebert was not impressed with it, giving it a poor 2.5 out of 4. "Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is more like a collection of short stories than a novel," the man's career often produces a ferociously structured film.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Kubrick's last film, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a Manhattan couple on a sexual journey. Tom Cruise portrays a doctor who witnesses a bizarre masked quasi-religious ritual at a country mansion, a discovery that later threatens his life. The tale is based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 Freudian novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story in English), which Kubrick moved from Vienna to New York City in the 1990s. Kubrick described the book as "a difficult book to describe"—but it isn't good." It explores the sexual ambivalence of a happy marriage and attempts to place sexual hopes and might-have-beens in a balanced light. All of Schnitzler's work is dazzling. Kubrick was almost 70 years old, but he battled hard for 15 months to get the film out before its target release date of July 16, 1999. He started a script with Frederic Raphael and spent 18 hours a day, while maintaining complete anonymity regarding the film.

Eyes Wide Shut was not released before it was launched, like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange. A few months before releasing, Kubrick sent an incomplete preview copy to the actors and producers, but it was a few days after he announced his death on March 7, 1999. He never saw the final version of the film out to the public, but he did get a glimpse of Warner Bros., Cruise, and Kidman, and he told Warner executive Julian Senior that it was his "best film ever." At the time, critical appraisal of the film was mixed, and it was less regarded positively than most of Kubrick's films. Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars, comparing it to a thriller and saying that it is "like an erotic daydream about chances ruined and opportunities saved," and that Kubrick's use of lighting at Christmas made the film "all a little gritty, like a city sideshow." The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter disapproved of the film, saying that it's "most sad, not bad." It's creaky, ancient, hopelessly out of touch, obsessed with his youth's hottest taboos and unable to identify with the nefarious thing that modern sexuality has devolved."

Kubrick collaborated with Brian Aldiss on converting his short story "Supertoys Last Summer Long" into a three-act film in the 1980s and 1990s. It was a futuristic fairy tale about a robot that looks and behaves as a child, as well as his efforts to become a'real boy' in a manner similar to Pinocchio. Kubrick wrote Kubrick's AI script in 1995 with the possibility of Steven Spielberg directing it and Kubrick producing it. According to Spielberg, Kubrick reportedly had long telephone conversations with Spielberg about the film, and at one point said that the subject matter was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his.

Spielberg based on Kubrick's stories and notes after Kubrick's death in 1999 and produced a new screenplay based on Ian Watson's guidance and requirements. He produced the film A.I. in collaboration with Kubrick's production team. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Kubrick's long-time developer (and brother-in-law) Jan Harlan, was released. The sets, costumes, and art direction were based on experimental artist Chris Baker's works, although he had also done a lot of his work under Kubrick's supervision.

Spielberg was able to function autonomously in Kubrick's absence, but said he was "inhibited to honor him" and followed Kubrick's artistic scheme with as much fidelity as he could. Spielberg, who once referred to Kubrick as "the greatest master I ever served," has resumed, "I felt like I was being led by a ghost." In June 2001, the film was released. Stanley Kubrick's posthumous production credit is given at the start of the book, as well as the brief dedication "For Stanley Kubrick" at the end. Many allusions to scenes from other Kubrick films are included in John Williams' score.

Kubrick wanted to film a documentary about Napoleon's life after 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick spent a considerable amount of time planning the film's production and conducting approximately two years of research into Napoleon's life, reading hundreds of books, and getting access to his personal memoirs and commentaries. He tried to see every film about Napoleon but found none of them appealing, including Abel Gance's 1927 film, which is generally considered a masterpiece, but Kubrick's "real bad" film. LoBrutto claims that Napoleon was an excellent model for Kubrick's "passion for influence, compassion, obsession, and the military," while Kubrick's "intuition and tenacity, as well as war, man's sexual defiance, and violence are all ingredients that attracted Kubrick.

Kubrick wrote a screenplay in 1961 and imagined a "grandiose" epic with up to 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. With a "so beautiful, like vast lethal ballets," he planned to film the film, rather than using the armed forces of a whole nation. He wanted them to be reproduced on film as faithfully as possible. Kubrick sent research teams to scout for locations around Europe, and one of his young assistants, Andrew Birkin, was sent by the Isle of Elba, Austerlitz, and Waterloo, taking thousands of photographs for his later persuasion. Kubrick had a chance to play leading roles, including Audrey Hepburn for Empress Josephine, which she was unable to accept due to semiretirement. Before Jack Nicholson was cast, British actors David Hemmings and Ian Holm were considered for the lead role of Napoleon. When MGM pulled the film out of preproduction and ready to start filming in 1969, it was well into preproduction and ready to begin filming. Several reasons have been given for the project's cancellation, including the project's estimated cost, a change of hands at MGM, and the poor reception it received in 1970 Soviet film about Napoleon, Waterloo. Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, a large volume collection of literature and source documents from Kubrick, including scene photo collections and copies of letters Kubrick wrote and received, was released in 2011. Steven Spielberg, who previously worked with Kubrick on A.I., died in March 2013. Artificial Intelligence and is a lifelong fan of his work, Kubrick's original screenplay, and he's based on his own TV miniseries.

Kubrick and Harris produced a sitcom starring Ernie Kovacs and a film adaptation of the book I Stole $16,000,000 in the 1950s, but no one heard of them. In a 2013 Atlantic essay, Tony Frewin, an assistant who worked with the director for a long time, revealed that "[Kubrick] was endlessly interested in anything to do with Nazis and desperately wanted to make a film on the subject." Kubrick planned to make a film about Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, a Nazi officer who used the term "Japan" to write reviews of German music scenes during the Nazi period. After he had ended production on Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick was given a copy of his book Swing Under the Nazis, which featured a photograph of Schulz-Köhn. Kubrick's adaptation was never complete, and no screenplay was ever completed, and Kubrick's version was never started. The unfinished Aryan Papers, based on Louis Begley's debut book Wartime Lies, was a factor in the project's demise. Kubrick was greatly distraught by his research on Aryan Papers, and he later discovered that Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) contained much of the same information.

Kubrick, according to biographer John Baxter, had shown an interest in directing a pornographic film based on Terry Southern's book "Blue Movie," about a director who makes Hollywood's first big-budget porn film. Kubrick claims he did not have the time or resources to become involved in the porn industry, and Southern said Kubrick was "too hip" toward sexuality to go into it, but liked the theory. After his dissatisfaction with the film version of The Name of the Rose, Kubrick was unable to produce a film based on Umberto Eco's Pendulum. Also, when the film rights to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings were sold to United Artists, the Beatles begged Kubrick to direct them in a film version, but Kubrick was unable to produce a film based on a very popular book.

Career influences

Kubrick, a young man, was captivated by the films of Soviet filmmakers, such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. Kubrick reviewed Pudovkin's seminal theoretical work, Film Technique, which claims that editing gives film a unique art form, and that manipulation must be used to bring the film to its fullest. Kubrick taught this technique to others for many years. "The most significant work on [Kubrick's] personal aesthetic development," Thomas Nelson puts in this book. Kubrick also discovered Konstantin Stanislavski's theories to be vital to his understanding the fundamentals of directing, and took himself a crash course to learn his methods.

Kubrick's family and several commentators agreed that his Jewish ancestry may have played a role in his film's success and the details. Both his son and wife said he was not religious, but that "did not deny his Jewishness" after his death. After years researching the Holocaust, his daughter said he wanted to make a film about the Holocaust, the Aryan Papers. Kubrick's most coworkers, early photography, and film co-founders were Jewish, and his first two marriages were to the daughters of new Jewish immigrants from Europe's youngest siblings. Frederic Raphael, a British screenwriter who worked closely with Kubrick in his last years, claims that Kubrick's films were partly because he "had a (Jewish?) mate." Scholars are lauded." He wrote that it was "absurd" to try to comprehend Stanley Kubrick without relying on Jewishness as a fundamental feature of his mentality.

Kubrick was inspired by director Max Ophüls' tracking and "fluid camera" techniques, and he used them in several of his films, including Paths of Glory and 2001: A Space Odyssey, according to Walker. "The camera went through every wall and every floor" in Ophuls' films, Kubrick explained. Le Plaisir (1952), Ophüls' (1952), was once his favorite film. Ophüls himself learned the technique from director Anatole Litvak in the 1930s, and his assistant's work was "replete with camera trackings, pans, and swoops that later became Max Ophüls' trademark." Kubrick was also influenced by Ophüls' stories of wartime love and a preoccupation with predatory males, according to Geoffrey Cocks, but Herr notes that Kubrick was influenced by G. W. Pabst's Trauma, the basis of Eyes Wide Shut, but was unable to translate Schnitzler's Trauma. Robert Kolker, a film historian and critic, sees Welles' moving camera photographs on Kubrick's style. Kubrick identified with Welles, who in turn inspired The Killing's production, which featured "multiple points of view, extreme angles, and deep focus," LoBrutto says.

In a personal letter, Kubrick praised Ingmar Bergman's work: "Your vision of life has moved me greatly, much more than I have ever been moved by any films." I believe you are the finest film-maker at work today [...], unsurpassed by anyone in the field of mood and atmosphere, the subtlety of appearance, the avoidance of the obvious, honesty, and completeness of description. To this one, one must also include everything else that goes into the making of a film; [...] and I will be looking forward with anticipation to each of your films."

When Kubrick asked Kubrick in 1963 to name his favorite films, he listed Italian director Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni as the top ten in his Top Ten Films list.

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