Stanley Kubrick: Existential Pragmatic Genius (Part One)

Stanley Kubrick was born on the 26th of July 1928 in New York City, New York, U.S.

He was an American filmmaker and photographer.

Throughout his career, he earned the reputation of not only being one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation, but he is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. 

Kubrick directed 5 short films and 11 feature-length films over his 40+ year career.

Always innovating, always obsessing over details

Kubrick's films tend to transcend "genre" instead they are quintessentially "Kubrickian".      

Born and raised in New York City, Young Stanley wasn't flagged as a genius when he was a kid but later it was established he had an IQ of 200. He developed an interest in literature, photography and chess from a young age.

Some have said Kubrick could have gone on to be a Chess Grand-master if he had chosen to.

Kubrick became obsessed with photography, lenses, film stock, developing and processing techniques, and reading books about photography. 

While in high school, Kubrick became the official school photographer. 

In the mid-40s, since he was still in High school he couldn't attend day session classes at a local college to study photography but he briefly attended evening classes at the City College of New York.

When he graduated high school the next year and managed to secure a position with 

Look Magazine as an apprentice photographer, quickly progressing to being a full-time staff photographer. 

Warren Schloat, Jr., another new photographer for the magazine at the time, recalled that he thought Kubrick would of lacked the kind of personality to make it as a director in Hollywood, Saying,

"Stanley was a quiet fellow. He didn't say much. He was thin, skinny, and kind of poor—like we all were."

Kubrick quickly gained a reputation for his ability to tell stories in his photographs. His first, pictures published as an employee of the magazine on April 16, 1946, was a series of photographs entitled,

 "A Short Story from a Movie Balcony" 

The photographs were of a man and a woman sitting next to each other in a movie theatre, While posing the shot Stanley asked the woman to slap the man in the face and he didn't inform the man this was going to happen, His male model was caught genuinely by surprise and young Kubrick captured the moment.

This demonstrated young Stanley was not just satisfied capturing what he saw, He wanted to direct events to add drama to enhance his projects. 

Kubrick was a big fan of Boxing and eventually began photographing boxing matches for the magazine. His work "Prizefighter" was published on January 18, 1949 and was a series of photographs capturing the day in the life of American middleweight fighter Walter Cartier depicting the match itself and the events leading up to it. 

Kubrick married his first wife Toba Metzhis who was his high-school sweetheart on May 28, 1948.

So he moved out of his parents apartment and moved into a small apartment at 36 West 16th Street, off Sixth Avenue just north of Greenwich Village with his new wife.

It was at this time Kubrick began attending film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art as well as various New York cinemas. 

He became inspired by the French director Max Ophüls and his complex, fluid camerawork and director Elia Kazan, whom Kubrick described as America's "best director" Stanley credited Kazan with the ability of "performing miracles" with his actors.

Friends began to notice Kubrick had become obsessed with the art of film making scrutinising films he saw and he spent hours reading books about film and film theory and making notes and began to teach himself about all aspects of film production and directing.

In 1950 Kubrick embarked on his first film project, inspired by his photographic series 

“The Prizefighter” from a year earlier, Stanley rented a camera and self-financed the 13 min documentary short film, 

The film is remarkably accomplished for a debut project for someone who was self-taught. Kubrick utilises the “backward tracking shot” to capture Cartier and his brother walking towards the camera. a technique which became one of Kubrick's signature camera moves and it’s on display from day one.

On completion of the film Kubrick had spent $3900 making it ($49,309 adjusted for inflation) and he sold it to RKO-Pathé for $4000 ($50,573 adjusted for inflation), which doesn't sound like a great deal but at the time that was the most RKO-Pathé had ever paid for a short film.  

Kubrick described his first film making experience as “valuable”, later in his life he declared that the "best education in film is to make one". 

Being empowered by the quality of his debut film Kubrick quit his job at Look Magazine to make movies. It was at this time Stanley and his wife got divorced.

I can't help but think those two events are somehow connected.

Since he was now a professional filmmaker... He began work on his next project 

He said in an interview later in life that he gained confidence during this period because of the number of bad films he had seen, remarking, 

"I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a better film than that".

This was Stanley's first longer form film clocking in at just over an hour and was his first narrative feature moving away from the documentary form.

In my opinion this is not great.  The script comes off as amateurish as far as the dialogue is concerned and  most of the acting is middle of the road at best. Kubrick was embarrassed by this project but it is made well considering the budget. It is the first time we see the most reoccurring theme in the Kubrick canon the "Anti-War" picture. 

Fun Fact! 

During the production of the film, Kubrick almost killed his cast with poisonous gasses by mistake.

In 1954 Kubrick started developing a feature-length film noir project co-writing the script with

Howard O. Sackler.

Originally titled "Kiss Me, Kill Me." then "The Nymph and the Maniac" they finally settled on...

Kubrick privately funded this film by borrowing from family and friends and $40,000 was lent to Stanley by local Bronx pharmacist Morris Bousse.

This decision ended up being a costly one after spending 12–14 weeks shooting the movie, he then had to spend seven months and an additional $35,000 working on the sound getting the actors to record dialogue to be over-dubbed and creating sound effects. All stuff that is par of the course in the professional movie business must have been a rude awakening for the self-taught filmmaker. 

The film ended up costing $75,000 ($853,000,00 in today's money) and it was only a modest success at the box office.

Martin Scorsese has cited Kubrick's innovative shooting angles and atmospheric shots in Killer's Kiss as an influence on Raging Bull (1980).

While playing chess in Washington Square, Kubrick met aspiring film producer

James B. Harris, who later referred to Stanley as,

"the most intelligent, most creative person I have ever come in contact with."

The two formed "The Harris-Kubrick Pictures Corporation" in 1955

Harris purchased the film rights to Lionel White's 1955 novel "Clean Break" for $10,000.

Kubrick wrote a screen play based on the book, They then hired noir crime novelist

Jim Thompson to rewrite and punch-up the dialogue in the script.

Kubrick and Harris moved to Los Angeles and signed with the Jaffe Agency to shoot the picture, which became Kubrick's first film shot with a professional cast and crew.

A sure fire way to avoid mistakes like the faux pas regarding the audio in his previous project. 

The film was shot in 24 days on a budget of $330,000. Kubrick clashed with the veteran cinematographer Lucien Ballard during shooting, and on one occasion Kubrick threatened to fire Ballard following a camera dispute, despite being aged only 27 and 20 years Ballard's junior.

Star of the movie Sterling Hayden recalled Kubrick was

 "cold and detached. Very mechanical, always confident".

“The Killing” failed to secure a proper release in the United States and the film made little money and was promoted poorly.

Eventually, it was released as a second feature on a double bill with the Western movie “Bandido!” (1956).