In the 1920s, if you were making a Hollywood movie and needed an actor to play the role of a film director, you called Central Casting, and you asked for a dozen Erich von Stroheim look-alikes, and then you'd choose which one you liked best. In the 1950s, you called for Alfred Hitchcock look-alikes.
Today, you'd ask for a dozen Stanley Kubrick-alikes, because in the last 40 years, his is the face of the definitive film director: beaded, balding, pensive, sloppily dressed, and intense.
Ironically, for such an iconic figure, Kubrick was the classic cobbler's son: a professional photographer who hated being photographed, who became a film director who hated being filmed.
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures is the follow-up to the fascinating documentary that played the festival and cable movie channel circuit last year before finding a home in Warner Brothers' Kubrick Collection boxed DVD set. The film collected rare behind-the-scenes film footage of Kubrick in action, along with interviews with many of colleagues and actors. However, for this coffee table-sized book, Christiane Kubrick (Stanley's wife since 1959) collected hundreds of photos of Kubrick ranging from family snapshots when he was three months old, to some of the last photographs taken of Kubrick before his death in March of 1999.
There's not all that much text or background information, so whether or not this book will appeal to you depends on your obsession with Kubrick in particular, or filmmaking in general. As for me, as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I was, and still am, a huge Kubrick fan, ever since college in the mid-1980s, when I would raid the library (and nearby libraries) for books, magazine articles and newspaper clippings about him. I've probably since acquired about 30 books related to Kubrick, and far too many articles as well. (Not to mention having bought most of his films on VHS, laser disc and DVD.) Kubrick had an incredible ability to layer an incredible amount of information and subtext in his films, and was arguably the director of post World War II American film in the twentieth Century. it's easy to say that Star Wars would be inconceivable without Kubrick's pioneering efforts on 2001: A Space Odyssey. But how could the script to the darkly satiric Wag the Dog have been written without Dr. Strangelove. Or Pulp Fiction, with its elliptical structure and petty criminals, without The Killing?
In his brief but definitive portrait of the mature Kubrick, Michael Herr points to a photograph of Kubrick at age 13 (reproduced above, but ironically one not reproduced in the Life In Pictures book), as an almost Rosebud-like image. Kubrick at age 13 still has a full complement of baby fat (not to mention a healthy shock of hair), but the most intense, dark, brooding and intelligent of any 13 year old. Ever. While it's a fool's errand to read much into photographs, those eyes seem to say one thing: "I may be 13, but you don't want to mess with me. And someday, when I conquer the world, you really won't want to mess with me."
Article comments
1 - Fredrik
Hello, i have just seen this documentary about Stanley Kubrick.
And in the end of the program i heard a music piece i recognized. But i cant remember from where.
Its not the last pieces, its the one just before.
I would be very glad if someone could help me in telling me what or who done it.
Sincerly yours Fredrik
2 - mostafa
i lpve stanley kubrick and his great films he is really a monster in cinema i loving him for ever
3 - Brian Melkowits
I want to answer Fredrik's question about the piano music from the film "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." When I watched the film, I was convinced that it was a piano work written by Robert Schumann, so I waited for the name of the piece when the credits rolled. Alas, the music was not credited. After several months I was eventually able to listen to every work that was for piano or that utilzed the piano by Schumann, and discovered that the music is a paraphrase of the piano accompaniment at the end of his song cycle, Dichterliebe. Whoever worked on the music for the film was very good at imitating Schumann's style in writing a variation on a theme by Schumann in the manner of Schumann. It cannot possibly be original music by another composer (except the film composer who derived it from Schumann) because no one else sounds like Schumann (even though Brahms borrowed motifs from him many times, it does not sound like Brahms). If someone can contradict me by finding a piece by some other 19th century or early 20th century composer that is closer (or is) this music, I would be humbled but delightfully surprised. I hope this helps. Listen to the end of Dichterliebe (if you have the time, listen to the whole cycle as it is wonderful) and you will likely recognize the material that is paraphrased in the film.