Academy Tribute to Stanley Kubrick

Well, it quite honestly doesn’t get much better than this.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, my favourite film-maker is Stanley Kubrick, the great pioneer and iconoclast of post war cinema. Last Friday I was privileged to attend a BAFTA & AMPAS co-sponsored event to celebrate the life and work of Stan the Man at London’s South Bank.

The evening was comprised of a lengthy cantor through Kubrick’s career, with clips of each movie in the official oeuvre (nothing from ‘Fear & Desire‘ here!!) interspersed with reminiscences and anecdotes by some of the talent that Kubrick attracted to each of his projects, both behind and in front of the camera. Our guide was none other than Alex himself who peppered the evening with his own stories and recollections and also served to dissipate some of the wilder rumours that have coalesced around the great man. I’m a bit of a victim of my own obsession, as none of the stories of anecdotes were new or unheard to me – hardly surprising given that I own and have read just about every Kubrick book on the market.

McDowell delivered the old ping-pong payment story from ‘Clockwork Orange’ (recording the narration over two weeks, Kubrick only paid him for one as the other was spent playing Ping-Pong) and the ‘Barry Lyndon’ amputee story (1st AD travels the world to find a suitable stand-in for Ryan O’ Neil for the final shot of the movie showing Barry with one leg amputated, struggling his way into a carriage, seen from behind. After months of frustration and rejections from SK the AD finally finds and flies in a perfect stand-in from a Belgian circus, AD proudly stands in foyer at Borehamwood relieved that his ordeal is over, Kubrick strolls past, glances and barks ‘wrong leg’ and continues on to the set…) along with some of the technicians and actors who collaborated with Kubrick over the years, adding their thoughts and memories, including his personal assistant for twenty years Anthony Frewin, the ravishing Marisa Berenson, legendary Production Designer Sir Ken Adams, Kubrick’s brother in law and Executive Producer Jan Harlan, cinematographer Oswald Morris and frequent first assistant director Brian Cook.

A good friend of mine, knowing of my obsessive devotion to Kubrick once posed the question – but why Kubrick? What is about him that elevates his films above those of Welles or Bresson, Scorsese or Lang? Well, here goes;

Firstly, one of my first memories is of seeing the Stargate and ‘human zoo’ sequence in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘. It was on TV, I simply remember being utterly freaked out and scared so much so that my Dad had to pick me up to settle me down. I was 22. A-ha. But seriously…..no, I must have been four or five and it has always stayed with me so much so that the Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite sequence is for me quite simply the best collection of images on celluloid. Ever. Full stop. End of story. To think that this sequence was in a ‘normal’, US studio massive big budget release is breath-taking. Cinematically speaking, you have not lived unless you’ve seen 2001 on the big screen, as intended – I’ve caught it twice, once during the re-release appropriately enough in the year 2001, and once last year with camera operator Kelvin Pike in attendance.

Secondly, he is a unique talent not only in the unprecedented total and utter command of every aspect of production of every film from ‘Lolita’ onward, but for me he has made one of the top five films ever made in every genre he worked in. Think about it – the Hollywood epic, the crime film, the literary adaptation, of course the Sci-Fi film, the Horror film, and take your pick of the war films.

Thirdly, the cinematic choices. The incredible fusion of image and music – Beethoven in ‘Orange’, the discordant eerie score of ‘The Shining’, Ligetti and the Blue Danube in ‘2001‘. The use of source lighting as de rigour in every film including using the fastest lenses ever, developed by NASA and adopted for the candlelight scenes in ‘Barry Lyndon’. The glacial, symmetrical compositions, the operatic tracking shots, the invention of the reverse zooms – the constant search for perfection.

As well as being one of the finest technicians in film, no-one straddles that fine-line between commercial and art film in quite the same way as Kubrick. Every one of the films are densely conceived, obsessively researched, prepared and executed. He told stories in a different way, ‘pushing at the boundries’ as Sydney Pollack put it, developing and evolving the very form of cinema.

Fourthly, on a personal front I share the views and opinions expressed through the films – we are a pretty absurd and ridiculous species, and the world is a deeply corrupt, cruel and inhuman place. I share the cynicism and pessimism evident in much of his work however this is punctuated with some celebrations, some optimism – the image of humanity evolved as the Star Child, the resigned finale and support of fidelity in ‘Eyes Wide Shut‘, the affirmation of life at the end of ‘Paths of Glory’ that I’ve linked to below (which opened the evening). OK, let’s move on from that charming insight into my psyche…

Finally there is the fact that ‘Barry Lyndon’ is the most beautifully shot film in history, that ‘2001’ has the most audacious and visionary edit in cinema history, that in ‘The Shining‘ we have for me the most hypnotic and unsettling scene in cinema history……well, I could go on. No-one, to my mind has made the same achievements, has pushed the very boundaries of the art form formally and technically, and has conjured up such memorable scenes than Kubrick. Here endth the lesson.

 

I’ve published the programme here for your perusal, and to make the members of the yahoo.alt.movies.kubrick net group insanely jealous – hi guys !!. Here are the clips that were used to illustrate the great man’s career, as best as I can find them on youtube (apologies for the Italian clips of Lyndon, and awful soundtrack to the ‘Shining’ clip as that was the clip they projected, but what can you do?). I should also mention that I was lucky enough to be sat directly behind Kubrick’s second daughter Anya and had a perfect view of the proceedings from a aisle seat on the fourth row. So maybe, just maybe I can finally forgive the BFI for not supplying me with tickets to the David Lynch Q&A earlier in the year. And yes I did use the word ‘oeuvre’ in this entry. I should be ashamed of myself….