Stanley Kubrick
-
1975
Kubrick was one of those extremely rare directors who never made a bad film. He never even made a mediocre film by my estimation. Barry Lyndon is one of his least recognized films, but that only means that it's better than 90% of the other films ever made. I first saw the film on the small screen, and didn't give it the thought it deserves. This time, I saw it in a rare 35mm print with an audience, and as often happens in this forum, I found it to be considerably more enjoyable, funnier and more profound. Aside from the very dry humor, I noticed more clearly that Barry is not a sympathetic protagonist. He is in fact a pathetic, awful man who truly gets what he deserves in the end. He spends the entire film cheating, stealing other mens' wives, deserting from the army, and abusing those who look to him for love. Somehow, Ryan O'Neal plays him in such a way that we still feel sorry for him. Kubrick perfects this balancing act of keeping the protagonist likable in both his script and his direction of O'Neal.
Another triumph of the film is its attention to the minutest details. Some consider this to be the most beautiful film ever photographed. Kubrick created special lenses to allow interior scenes to be shot with only the candlelight seen on-screen. The period costumes were nearly all antique and appropriate to the time. Kubrick did everything he could to make this film authentic.
In addition to the joy of seeing this beautiful print of the film, Kubrick's personal assistant, Leon Vitali, was present for a question and answer session. Vitali was not only Kubrick's personal assistant, but he worked as his casting director and in Barry Lyndon played the all important role of Lord Bullingdon, Barry's stepson. I took notes during the Q & A, and here's my best attempt to share the experience.
After watching the three hour costume drama of Barry Lyndon it's important to notice the extraordinarily short list of credits. Stanley Kubrick generally worked with a small group of friends on his films.
Barry Lyndon was mauled in both the American and in the British press. Stanley Kubrick was so distraught that he wouldn't watch the film for years afterward. Vitali had to make an interpositive print in secret to keep the film from being forever lost, because Kubrick didn't want any new prints made. (An interpositive is a print created directly from the original negative. It is then used to make further negatives which are in turn used to make working prints. This is done to prevent overhandling of the original negative.) Kubrick never talked about his films with pride, even those that were well received.
Stanley Kubrick was planning on making a costume drama about the life of Napoleon before he started work on Barry Lyndon. He had actually started serious work on the project, including costuming and gathering financing. Rod Steiger's version was making a version at the same time and when it was released it bombed. Because of this Kubrick pulled out of the Napoleon project.
When Stanley worked with actors on the set, he worked at the level of a stage director. Take the duel scene from Barry Lyndon for instance. This scene was written by Stanley and the actors as they shot it. Improvisation was not only allowed, but encouraged. Stanley would walk around with his viewfinder on the set to find the perfect angle for the scene. He didn't have it all mapped out beforehand, but allowed the process to be organic. During the filming of this scene he had about 50 research books on the topic of duels on set. These books included information on duels from all different time periods and parts of the world. He and the actors would constantly reference the books for ideas. He would have an idea for dialogue, but would give the actor the chance to determine how the character would say a particular line. Eyes Wide Shut was one of his films that did not include as much improvisation. On Full Metal Jacket, however, actors could say anything they liked. He would say there are no dumb ideas. Vitali said "He was a godsend. He was the greatest as an actor."
The research techniques he used on his different films tended to be similar. The research didn't stop even during the shoot and production of the film. The exception to the rule was The Shining where nearly all of the research was completed beforehand. On Eyes Wide Shut, for example, there were enormous amounts of research in order to recreate New York City. A team of photographers brought back 125,000 still photos of the streets and building interiors from the city for Kubrick to use in preparation. The idea was that Kubrick could find something in London to match the look of New York for the shoot, but he soon found that New York has a very unique feel to it. The interiors of the film were sets built from the stills. The same technique was used in The Shining and a great number of photos of hotels drove the look of the film.
One of the reasons Eyes Wide Shut was not shot on location is that Tom Cruise would have been mobbed. The crew actually was able to pull off the Soho club scene on location in London without anyone leaking the shoot details.
For those of you who felt cheated by Warner Bros. release of the censored version of Eyes Wide Shut in the United States, Vitali claims that there is a re-release of the DVD with no CGI manipulation in the works for the U.S. market. I hope this does come to pass.
Unlike most directors, Stanley would typically take a full year for preproduction, another year for the shoot and yet another year for postproduction.
Stanley took independent control of his films from a very early point in his career. The popular thought is that this occurred after 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it really took place as early as Lolita. How did he achieve such independence? He simply assumed he had it until someone told him differently. He made A Clockwork Orange very quickly and it was an enormous success. Warner Bros. sought him out for A Clockwork Orange and then just didn't bother him. Since he was in England, they couldn't book meetings nearly as easily as if he were in L.A. Occasionally he would get pressure to meet, and a studio representative came over to England once during the shoot of Barry Lyndon and once during the shoot of The Shining.
Stanley Kubrick never seemed worried about what people thought of his adaptation of a popular book or even what expectations there might be about what he might do next. He did worry once the film was completed and it was time for release, though.
He was beset by extremely good luck at times. For instance, Stanley could not (and would not, had he the chance) film Full Metal Jacket in Vietnam, but he found a gas production plant in England that was designed by the same individual who planned a city in Vietnam.
Leon Vitali worked very closely with Kubrick as a casting director on many of his films. Vitali tried to play down his role in the decision making and stated very clearly that Kubrick had the final choice on every person that appeared on-screen. Vitali did talk some about his process, however, and how he was able to quietly get his favorite actors to be chosen in the cast. Vitali, being an actor himself, would perform a scene with the actor in the casting call. He would tape these auditions and then present them to Stanley for review, ranking his favorites by their order in the pile. At first, he would simply place his favorite on top of the pile and so on down the line, but realized that his top actors were rarely chosen. In a stroke of psychological brilliance Vitali started to put his favorite in position three or four in the stack and he starting having much better luck, Kubrick never being the wiser! Vitali was particularly happy about his casting of Danny Lloyd who played the little boy in The Shining and of Ngoc Le who played the pivotal role of the Vietcong sniper in the conclusion of Full Metal Jacket. Le was Vietnamese, but had never acted before and barely spoke English. Kubrick had no idea what he was going to get until she arrived on set, and she gave one of the most memorable performances of the film.
Vitali also talked some about A.I. This is a film Kubrick planned on making for years but was never able to move it past the script stage. He was greatly concerned with the quality of the effects for the robot boy. After Kubrick saw Jurassic Park and The Abyss, he started to believe that he might be able to use CGI to create the boy but died before he could start filming. Vitali said Kubrick "was a friend of any technology he could make use of." After Kubrick's death, Steven Spielberg finished the film with the blessing of his widow, Christiane. Vitali was kind to Spielberg's interpretation of the film, but was realistic about the fact that Spielberg could never make the film Kubrick would have made. Even if Spielberg filmed the script exactly as written in its most recent draft, as the film's producers claimed, it would still not have been the film Kubrick would have made. Kubrick was constantly at work on all of his films, even during the shoot. Vitali surmised that Spielberg may have been trapped by having to stick too closely to the script and he felt that Spielberg was "damned if he did and damned if he didn't."
Kubrick's collaboration with cinematographers was in line with his collaboration in general. He had final say and worked with people, such as John Alcott, who would ultimately serve his vision. Accorting to Vitali, Alcott had a great eye for the camera, but always brought into being what Stanley wanted to see on-screen.
Like some other master filmmakers, such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kubrick believed that every picture stood for itself. He had no cares about continuity errors. While Ozu focused his energy on perfecting the composition of the shot, though, Kubrick's focus was on the dramatic power of the take.
Among Kubrick's favorite filmmakers were Max Ophüls, Spielberg, Scorcese and "many others". His influences started to form when he was just a still photographer.
Kubrick mixed nearly all of his films in mono. This wasn't because Kubrick had some great love for the mono sound, but rather that he was extremely particular about the quality of experience a filmgoer might actually have in the theater. He even went so far as to send people out to spot check the quality of film houses for quality. At the time he was making film, the vast majority of the theaters only had mono or bad sound systems. He finally relented and made Eyes Wide Shut in stereo. With the release of his DVDs in the past few years, all of his films have been mixed in 5.1 surround sound from the original soundtrack elements.
The biggest compliment given to Kubrick that evening was Vitali's closing remark. He said that he can still sit down and watch Kubrick's films although he's already seen them hundreds or even thousands of times in the process of restoring them for the DVD release. If he's flipping through the channels and finds a Kubrick film on TV, he'll stop and watch every time.