Favorite Stanley Kubrick Film

Hi,

Even though a lot of movies "include" history, many folks don't like to see these movies used as a de facto idea of what history is, or was ... but sometimes, it is hard to not laugh and appreciate the old stooges using their canes to keep time in front of the king, and then agree with him when he says "too many notes", to a musical style (at the time) that was notoriously slow and strictly time kept! ... familiar? guess what daw'ists do? The same thing!

But in general, for example, theater and music, were originally together in Greek theater as part of their festivals, and some how they got separated, more than likely by the new "religion" that decreed Oedipus bad, since it did not approve something that probably had happened for many hundreds or thousands of years before! All that was left? Edith Hamilton's Walt Disney version of the Greek stories, and some horrible misogyny that is pathetic and sick! I get really sick hearing about Medea poisoning a robe, when all the lighting in those days was by candles and oils on a pedestal, and in rooms that had carpets in all walls and floor to keep the heat in ... and how easy it would be for a fire to spread if one of those fell! Glauce likely hit one of those and the place blew up a fire! But the messenger, tells a vile story of hatred for the "magic" and women that had strength as Medea did ... my thoughts still are that the "chorus" was an invention that was badly translated and used to usher a new ear of religious controls ... plain and simple. It had nothing to do with a public sentiment!

To see, and find, as you say, that the music in "Barry Lyndon" is important (I have a copy arriving this week for me!) is something that is far out, and I really look forward to seeing it. I don't specifically know the names of the pieces and what they are about, but will definitely look for it, and maybe even look for a soundtrack CD.

Hi,

I think the "psychological profile" is something that Stanley Kubrick allowed a lot of his actors to do and even goes back to Peter Sellers in "Dr. Strangelove" where a lot of improvisation is used, and not likely to have been written, and allowing actors that have a good feel for things, and Peter definitely had tuned that very well with The Goons on radio for 12 years, a chance to fly ... they will always give you moments that are special, and I think that Jack Nicholson has a lot of that and it goes back to "some of his early material, and is very evident in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Moments like the "here's Johnny" line, are rarely written ... and are best shown when it happens ... specially when it was well known that Stanley Kubrick had a habit or re-shooting things ... Jack would probably have dropped an F-bomb and then just let it all hangout ... and ... voila ... there it was what SK was looking for but had no words for it!

LOLITA does not appear, at first sight, to have any improvisation, but all of a sudden you hear Shelly Winters say her line about the cavity to James Mason, and you know right away that the idea was to make a sex joke around it. It's really hard to write those, because they are so dependent on the moment itself, though it can be done, but the use and implementation, specially in film or theater, suffers, because interpretations break the mood and take out the fun in it, although today we would say how sexist and this and that it is!

There are a lot of other very well known implementations of improvisation in Stanley Kubrick's films, however, he is a good director and he tries to blend those parts with everything else, so it does not seem that far away from the character's completeness for the piece. A lot of films let go of that cohesion so that what you get later is not even close to the early part, but in SK's films it tends to last. 

And there are times when it is difficult to watch, since it is clear that the actors are not quite comfortable with it, and are struggling with it. And it makes the film seem uneven and not quite enjoyed by a lot of folks. And this is the hard part of improvisation ... some folks can do it, and some actors have to know the lines to be able to get close to it, but they are not very good at it. Dustin Hoffman is a good example, however, he is a "deep" student of his characters, and he knows how to FILL IN the space, so you can't tell the difference, and his ability is in this "blank" space, as it is called on the stage. A good actor, will hide all these moments and you will never know it. Of the great "Actor's Studios" folks, not many were really good at improvisation, although it is believed that Marlon Brando was the best of them, and most of the folks around him, were too self-conscious to be able to let go like Marlon did in at least one play ... the moment that was never quite repeated even in film ... it was that strong. The English, conversely, are specialists in this and both the RSC and NT worked a lot of improvised theater, and their 60's was almost all ... improvisation left and right until it freed a lot of actors into some incredible performances everywhere. This helped make GODOT possible, for example, and make us think of everything else but!

I wanted to mention/discuss "A Clockwork Orange", but I wonder if some younger folks got attached to the youth running a muck ... and later getting ganged up by "society" for his doings. It was/is a perfect example of what happened to the "flower children" and how the media destroyed the whole thing, and eventually tried to destroy all the arts ... that came with that era. Didn't quite succeed because the music survived and then some, but a lot of all the other artistic things, specially in America, are not remembered, or even appreciated as fully as they should.

I often look at some of the films at the time and how they were "anti-establishment" in many ways ... "The Wild Bunch", "A Clockwork Orange", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "Five Easy Pieces", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and other things.

Quite interesting, but I don't think that Stanley Kubrick was not quite aware of the time and place of things, and his films in the early days were more "on topic" than the later material ... so it seems for the most part. By the time he got to his last films, I think that most of us had tuned out.

2001 - A Space Odyssey would be my second one.