Stanley Kubrick

The exhibition about one of the greatest filmmakers in cinematic history - Stanley Kubrick and his career gives an insight into the creative design process of filmmaking and creation of worlds for his films. With many interviews, projections, letters and photographs which give an extra support, it becomes a definite must see for everyone who is interested in the world of cinema.

PERFECTION

His films are mostly famous for having specific sense of humour, wide set designs and being truly realistic. He was a demanding perfectionist and always wanted to have a control over every aspect of the filmmaking process from direction and writing to editing. He would often spend moths or even years researching every detail so that his movies are as authentic as possible and to build screen worlds in obsessive detail. He often asked for many retakes of the same scene in a movie which must have resulted in many arguments with the cast. He was fully involved in every movie. There was nothing cut without him, he was there every second, marked every frame and had everything done exactly the way he wanted it. He was never concerned about the difficulty to shoot something or about the costs. He would say that 'when you are shooting, you want to make sure you don't miss anything and you cover it as fully as time and budget allow'.When he was considering making a movie about the life of Napoleon, he said: 'I wouldn't want to fake it with fewer troops because Napoleonic battles were out in the open, a vast yableau where the formations moved in an almost choreographic fashion. I want to capture this reality on film'.

THE SHINING

Kubrick involved one of America's most influential graphic designers to work on the design and storyboarding who had to endure Kubrick's perfectionism by producing for example numerous versions of the poster for 'The Shining' before Kubrick was finally satisfied.

The Overlook Hotel was a major character in Kubrick's adaptation of 'The Shining'. It was a faithful reconstruction of the facade of a ski resort in Oregon. It was gigantic. Polystyrene chips dropped during filming gave the illusion of falling snow, while the snow on the ground was made from salt and fog machines created the mist.

Paper models of the Overlook Hotel

SPARTACUS

Although Kubrick's year-long shoot and almost 400 kilometers of film made him achieve flowing scenes, it pushed the actors to the edge of exhaustion.

One of the movies that he didn't have a complete control over, was 'Spartacus'. It was his only attempt at making a traditional Hollywood film and the first time that he worked on a movie where he was employed. Despite receiving many awards for the best cinematography, production design, costumes and supporting actor, Kubrick remained dissatisfied.

Kubrick used numbers so that it is easier for him to direct people.

DR. STRANGELOVE

The first production designer to be knighted, who designed the war room for Dr. Strangelove was Ken Adam. He was said to be a brilliant visualiser of worlds who creates images of interiors which we are never going to see but they are more real than real themselves.

INSPIRATION

He was so determined to find the best possible place to film, that he would ask his assistants to photograph every building, landscape, interior and machine which could be a useful reference. Thousands of location photos helped him create his visions.

He was also inspired by one of the photographers - Don Mccullin, who by taking remarkable images during the Tet Offensive, a key turning point in the Vietnam war, gave Kubrick his starting point for the atmosphere evoked by the film 'Full Metal Jacket'.

To film 'A Clockwork Orange' Kubrick used a number of examples of British Brutalism such as Thamesmead or a new town built on marshes east of London (which, by technical failures and the social realities of poverty, had come to be perceived as urban dystiopias) making it newly fashionable.

MUSIC

Music is one of the greatest weapons that every film-maker has, including the non-use of music and the correct use of it. He used it to prepare the audience for something or to provoke emotions in his actors for example playing Irma la Douce to bring tears to James Mason's eyes.

'One of the things that horror stories can do is show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly.' Stanley Kubrick

Original costumes

Editing place

'A director is a kind of idea and taste machine; a movie is a series of creative and technical decisions, and it's the director's job to make the right decisions as frequently as possible.'

- Stanley Kubrick

REFERENCES

1. Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, (26.04 - 15.09.2019), London