Stanley Kubrick is one of the greatest directors of all time. That’s not hyperbolic or controversial to state; it’s a generally accepted fact within the film community. His filmography speaks for itself, and his reputation as an exacting and controlling filmmaker has been exhaustively documented. Kubrick’s status as a filmmaker has grown considerably over time, to a level of acclaim and accompanying controversy that matches the thirteen movies he directed. There are many things that can, and have, been written about Kubrick as a filmmaker, but one thing he certainly wasn’t was prolific. With a career spanning five decades, Kubrick never made more than four films in any one of them, and that level of productivity slowed even further in the last three.
His relatively small output is an obvious consequence of his meticulous approach to filmmaking, as well as the long periods of gestation that his projects would go through, many of which were never even produced. It’s a matter of quality over quantity with Kubrick, and most of his films are considered masterpieces. There’s an argument to be made for any decade of Kubrick’s career being the defining, but if any seems the strongest, it’s the ’60s. Kubrick directed four films in the decade, and each is more distinct than the last: a sword-and-sandals epic, a controversial literary adaptation, a political satire, and a hard sci-fi film. Kubrick was never a complacent filmmaker, and his four incredible films from the ’60s are all evidence of that.
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‘Lolita’ (1962)
Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita was considered unfilmable. Told entirely from the perspective of a literature professor who becomes sexually infatuated with a 12-year-old girl, it’s a discomforting psychological portrait of a pedophile. It inspired equal amounts of praise and vitriol, but everyone agreed it was undeniably uncinematic, relying entirely on Nabokov’s poetic prose and dark wit filtered through the manipulative mind of a sexual predator. Lolita would be a difficult novel to adapt in any era, but especially in the early ’60s, when the conservative Hays Code was still in effect. In many respects, the film is an imperfect adaptation that falls short of the novel, using suggestive language and visuals in place of more explicit content, and occasionally shifting focus to its supporting characters.
Humbert Humbert (James Mason) is an academic summering in a small New Hampshire town before becoming a professor at an Ohio college. He rooms with the widowed Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) and her daughter Dolores (Sue Lyon), referred to as Lolita. Humbert quickly becomes obsessed with Lolita, causing friction between him and Charlotte, who has fallen in love with him. After Charlotte’s accidental death, Humbert pursues her daughter, but finds himself in strange competition with the equally predatory playwright Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers). Sellers dominates the second half of the film, even unbalancing its precarious management of tone, but he’s undeniably unnerving and effective. Mason is equally effective in handling Humbert’s haughty attitude and paranoid pitifulness, Winters is desperate and tragic, and Lyons is an incredible mix of maturity and naivety. The true tragedy of Lolita is the cultural legacy that misinterprets its titular character as a sexual object, made worse by the fact that producer James B. Harris was later accused of sexually abusing Lyons, which casts an even darker shadow over the film. Lolita is a compromised film by its very nature, but a compelling one nonetheless that cleverly circumvents the limits of its censorship and would have likely been unwatchable under the guidance of another filmmaker.
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‘Spartacus’ (1960)
The control Kubrick exerted over Lolita, and every film he directed after it, came as a result of his experience on Spartacus. Star Kirk Douglas originally developed the film with director Anthony Mann, who was removed only two weeks into filming and replaced by Kubrick. The director had previously collaborated with Douglas on Paths of Glory, but the two would clash on Spartacus. In fact, Kubrick would clash with almost everyone on the film, from screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to cinematographer Russell Metty and studio head Ed Muhl. He would later distance himself from the film, but his influence is part of what makes Spartacus stand out among similar epics of the era. The battle sequences, shot on location in Spain, are enormous and astonishing to behold, especially compared to many modern films that have to rely on digital armies. Kubrick’s sense of spectacle, while a signature element of some of his most iconic films, is often lesser discussed in appreciation of his career, but it’s essential to Spartacus.
Spartacus (Douglas) is a slave under the Roman Republic during the first century BC. He’s purchased and trained to become a gladiator under Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), eventually escaping and becoming the leader of a slave revolt, which causes a schism between the elitist Roman senator Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and his rival Gracchus (Charles Laughton). The film’s ensemble cast is elite from top to bottom, including Tony Curtis as slave Antoninus, Woody Strode as gladiator Draba, and Jean Simmons as Spartacus’ love interest. Spartacus was a massive success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1960 and earning multiple Academy Award nominations, though Kubrick himself was snubbed. Even though Spartacus was Kubrick’s only true for-hire directorial job, and lacked the personal passion he would put into all his future projects, it was a massively important film in his career.
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‘Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ (1964)
Kubrick’s Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is the only overt comedy in his entire filmography. While Kubrick is often categorized as a cold and emotionally detached filmmaker, humor is present in all of his work, albeit often of a very dry variety. There are wry asides and ironic moments in even his most dour efforts, but Dr. Strangelove is the only Kubrick film that will likely elicit true belly laughs. Reteaming with Peter Sellers, whose comedic sensibilities were used for more ironic effect in Lolita, Kubrick fully unleashes his comic persona, giving him multiple roles to play with increasing levels of absurdity. Of course, the film didn’t start as a comedy.
When Air Force General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes madly rogue and orders a B-52 crew to drop a nuclear bomb on the Soviet Union, despite the objections of RAF Officer Mandrake (Sellers), the President of the United States (Sellers) and his inept War Room debate their best course of action. When they discover the Soviets have created a doomsday device that will destroy the entire planet, they consult with a scientific advisor and former Nazi, Dr. Strangelove (Sellers). The film builds to an absurd crescendo perfectly illustrated by the image of Slim Pickens riding a nuclear bomb like a bucking bronco. Dr. Strangelove set the gold standard for political satires, and its wit is just as razor-sharp decades later despite its specificity to the Cold War era. It seems the stupidity of politicians is timeless entertainment, and the film’s original ending, which featured the War Room engaging in a giant pie fight, would be too subtle for the current political climate.
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‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)
Kubrick’s greatest film of the 1960s is also his greatest film period, and one that is often in the conversation for the greatest film ever made. That’s astronomically high praise, but 2001: A Space Odyssey is an astronomical film. A technical marvel, a cosmic mystery, and a cinematic experience like few others, it’s Kubrick’s most ambitious and immaculately executed film. Interested in making a science fiction film involving extraterrestrial life, Kubrick sought out writer Arthur C. Clarke, whose short stories The Sentinel and Encounter in the Dawn inspired the screenplay the two co-wrote. Kubrick also wanted the film’s depiction of space to be more grounded in reality than the fantastic sci-fi efforts that were common at the time. He consulted with scientists and engineers to develop the film’s futuristic technology, and enlisted the best special effects artists, led by the legendary Douglas Trumbull, to bring that technology to life.
From the film’s prologue, where an alien monolith appears during the dawn of man and inspires an evolutionary leap forward, the film charts a course through the future of humanity, from space colonization to cosmic rebirth. The majority of the narrative concerns a mission to Jupiter where astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) have to contend with their ship’s rogue artificial intelligence, HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain). 2001 grapples with all kinds of prescient themes of technological progression and human evolution that have grown in relevancy as the technology of the real world has caught up with Kubrick’s film. Dave’s encounter with the monolith in the film’s climax, where he experiences a time-space trip and witnesses his own accelerated aging and eventual evolution, is an overwhelming visual and aural experience. It’s a sequence designed to be experienced in a movie theater and has inspired generations of sci-fi filmmakers. 2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick’s best film, and it would redefine science fiction in 1968, a full year before man landed on the moon.