Auteurs Of Cinema:
Stanley Kubrick
Conall Melarkey
Auteurs Of Cinema:
Stanley Kubrick
- By Conall Melarkey
An auteur is someone who reinvents cinema - an
undoubted master, an icon of influence, a unique,
formidable voice and vision. Someone who
aggressively manages to turn the medium of film
inside out and change the way it is to be seen for the
rest of its lifespan. Stanley Kubrick was an auteur.
The infamous ‘Kubrick Stare’
Stanley Kubrick is considered to be one of the finest
filmmakers in the history of cinema, an artist of
great intellect, who challenged his audience as if
they were opponents in his game of chess, exposing
many generations to new ways of thinking and
different perceptions of cinema, and the world, as we
know it. Whether he was dissecting the topics of
good, evil, war, time, space, lust, sanity (or indeed
‘insanity’), he always made them his own, in a way
that can only be described as ‘Kubrickian’.
Since 1954, the theory of the ‘Auteur’ in cinema has been an essential, domineering foundation in the
world of film criticism. It is a theory that suggests how it is the creative, distinctive voice of the director
behind a film, which makes it become not just a piece of story-on-celluloid, but rather an indispensable
facet of modern culture. It is the director’s vision that drives the film to become something of an artwork
and an exhibition of virtuosity. Due to the impact of the auteur theory, under the European Union, it has
become a law that the director is to be reflected as the author (or one of the authors) of a film1. The word
‘auteur’ is in fact French for ‘author’, which takes us to the origins of the auteur theory. One of the
domineering voices in the creation of auteur theory is the French filmmaker and critic Francois Truffaut.
Truffaut, who is well known for making films such as ‘The 400 Blows’ and ‘Jules and Jim’, developed
his theory whilst writing for the French film magazine ‘Cahiers Du Cinema’. The theory would also travel
in later years through the writings of American film critic Andrew Sarris. Truffaut examined his theory
through one of his idols, Alfred Hitchcock, which can be cited through the famous ‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’
interviews from 1962. In Truffaut’s article on Auteur Theory, he makes a detailed list of the elements
required for one to be considered an auteur in filmmaking. This essay will attempt to analyze how Stanley
Kubrick ticks all the boxes and should be seen as one of cinema’s great auteurs.
Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26 1928 to Jacques and Sadie Kubrick. Kubrick’s parents were of
Austrian, Romanian and Polish origin, but raised Stanley in apartment 2160 at Clinton Avenue in The
Bronx section of New York2. Although his father was a successful doctor, a family friend notes that how
Kubrick and his mother were “Such regular people, and had no hairs about them”3. At the age of thirteen,
Kubrick’s father bought him his first camera. Although Stanley was a poor student at his local High
School, his father was very supportive when Stanley announced that he wished to pursue a career as a
photographer4. Kubrick would become an apprentice photographer for Look magazine in 1946, shooting
hundreds of picture essays for the popular publishing unit. It was Kubrick’s early love of photography and
his unique obsession with light and composition that leads to one of the first issues raised in Francois
Truffaut’s auteur theory – visual trademarks.
Truffaut voiced how distinctive trademarks in a director’s film could characterize his/her body of work
and make them instantly recognizable. Film director William Friedkin states how “if you walked into a
Kubrick film half-way through, just by the visuals, you could tell that it was a Kubrick film”4. Like a
great painter would have an iconic vision, examples being Picasso with Cubism, Van Gogh with his
abstract impressionism, Stanley Kubrick could be put along the great pantheon of any visual artists, let
Still from ‘Barry Lyndon’
alone filmmakers, as he constructed
his films like unique, visionary
paintings. Stanley Kubrick has
many visual trademarks within his
body of work that make them
considerably
‘Kubrickian’.
Kubrick’s mesmerizing flair with
light was one such example of his
brilliance and innovation as a
craftsman in film. His 1975 film
‘Barry Lyndon’ remains to this day
as one of the most exemplary uses
of lighting in film history. Kubrick
often included the light sources in
the frames of his films – in ‘Barry
Lyndon’ we see various uses of very effective natural lighting, with such sources as visible candles and
intense backlighting through the large windows seen in mansions and castles. Kubrick modeled these
frames and visuals on the lighting seen in 18th century paintings. Kubrick stated that he had “created a
picture file of thousands of drawings and paintings for every type of reference”5. Kubrick’s use of lighting
in the earlier half of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ reveals that he was an absolute master at making the normal
world appear more dreamlike. In ‘A Clockwork Orange’, before the wicked Alex DeLarge undergoes his
mind aversion therapy, his ideal perspective of London appears surreal and trancelike, credited to
Kubrick’s neon/noir lighting. But after Alex is deprived of his free will by the government, the film
appears more mundane and less bizarre, as Alex is experiencing the isolation of the ‘real world’. Even in
‘Eyes Wide Shut’ as Dr. William Harford, played by Tom Cruise, undertakes a night of adventure and
temptation throughout New York City, a similar effect is applied to the city’s streets, making them appear
more illusory, allowing us to question Harford’s state of consciousness. The camerawork of Kubrick’s
films were also extremely effective in the creation of mood and atmosphere, particularly his iconic use of
tracking shots. In his horror classic ‘The Shining’, Kubrick is constantly moving the camera in the vast,
grand emptiness of the Overlook Hotel, slowly, even if there is no one in the frame. The technique
Kubrick adapts to his film indicates some sense of life or movement, even if we cannot see that moving,
living thing. The results are surprisingly creepy and foreboding. One of the most famous examples of the
‘Kubrick tracking shot’ was the forward tracking shot from ‘Paths Of Glory’, in which Kirk Douglas
treks through the murky trenches of WW1. Through this simple, yet technically effectual sequence,
Kubrick manages to convey the emotion, depression and anti-war ideology of the story, without a single
word said.
Kubrick’s use of ‘one-point perspective’ in ‘The Shining’
One of Kubrick’s other trademarks was
his use of symmetry and one-point
perspective, in which everything appears
to vanish into one point within the frame,
usually towards the center. The way
Kubrick meticulously constructed his
visuals, and the intense research he
applied to the framing and lighting in
films like ‘Barry Lyndon’, clearly
revealed that he was a total perfectionist,
probably cinema’s greatest perfectionist.
But how does this mentality fit into
auteur theory? Well, Truffaut declares
how it is important for auteurs to include their own “personal experiences” in their work, along with their
personal “psychological realism”6. Kubrick was often criticized for not making his films personal
enough, due to the intense, psychological themes, and extreme characters viewed in his work, but is that
entirely true? Steven Spielberg doesn’t think so: “I envy Stanley for all those years he worked at home,
within eyeshot of his kids growing up and his pets and his wife, and all of his colleagues. I loved working
from the house and I understand why Stanley loved working from the house, because his films were
personal, his life was personal. Everything about him is personal and being at home and not being in an
office is a whole different way of getting close to that Zeitgeist”7. The way in which Kubrick brought his
films into his life so extensively, in order to achieve the exact details he required, and the exact details we
see on screen in his work, tells us a lot about him. We learn that we was a totally meticulous, precise,
fastidious craftsman, who loved his films so much that he made them a large part of his life. If it is
usually perceived that Stanley Kubrick never made personal films, then that perception could be altered
by the fact that we learn more about Stanley Kubrick through his art than almost any other filmmaker.
It is noted how auteurs tend to deal with an underlying theme that
runs through the majority of their work. For example, Alfred
Hitchcock primarily studied the theme of the everyday man
entangled in a situation he cannot fully comprehend. Early in his
career, Stanley Kubrick once said, “We are capable of the
greatest good and the greatest evil, and the problem is that we
often can’t distinguish between them when it suits our purpose”8.
This was a major arc that travelled through the stories that
Kubrick chronicled, the idea of two conflicting attitudes battling
for control: whether it be good or evil, dreams and reality, man or
machine. The duality of mankind and the battle between two
opposing mentalities is hugely evident in almost the entirety of
Kubrick’s work. In the poster for ‘Full Metal Jacket’, we see a
helmet with the words ‘Born To Kill’, scrawled across it, but it
also has a peace badge attatched to it, depicting, as Private Joker
calls it, ‘The Duality Of Man’. ‘Full Metal Jacket’ was a dark
study in the transformation of innocent beings into ruthless killing
machines, resulting in possibly the most realistic portrayal of the
mental disintegration of enlister in war. In ‘A Clockwork
Orange’, the character of Alex is a happy-go-lucky rogue who
relishes in the interests of sex and violence. But when the
government use Alex as the subject for their new brainwashing method, Alex loses his free will and
becomes a mechanical organism, fleshy on the outside, but ticking and whirring on the inside, or as the
title suggests, ‘a clockwork orange’, causing Alex’s inner-evil to only bubble up deep inside of him. In
Kubrick’s 1962 film ‘Lolita’, Humbert Humbert, played by James Mason, struggles to confess his love
for the adolescent Lolita. But Humbert’s dark side in the form of Clare Quilty, played by Peter Sellers,
does not hesitate, and takes total advantage of the young girl. Carl Jung called this dark side ‘The
Shadow’. Kubrick was aware of Jung’s theories and frequently quoted them9, revealing that the themes
for his films, and the decision to tell these stories, were highly deliberate.
When he originally wrote his article, Truffaut criticized filmmakers who received vast critical acclaim for
their rather voiceless and non-unique literature adaptations, as well crafted as they may be. He stated that
true auteurs craft stories and themes designed especially for “visual storytelling”10. However, all of
Stanley Kubrick’s films were in reality, literature adaptations. So does that exempt Kubrick from this
factor of auteur theory? The answer is, of course not. Stanley Kubrick was frequently criticized for in
fact straying too far from his original literary source material. The most famous example of such
controversy within Kubrick’s portfolio was the film adaptation of Stephen King’s classic horror tale, ‘The
Shining’. Stephen King famously disliked the adaptation of his novel, decrying the underplaying of the
supernatural elements: “Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror,
but others fall flat. Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick
just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel… What's basically wrong with
Kubrick's version of ‘The Shining’ is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little;
and that's why, for all its virtuoso effects, it never gets you by the throat and hangs on the way real horror
should”11. But years after the film was released, it has gained unmitigated infamy as one of the ‘scariest
films ever made.’ Kubrick made the story of ‘The Shining’ advance from being a simple haunted house
story into a myriad of dark complexities within the human psyche. Kubrick doesn’t talk down to the
Still from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
audience: he makes us use our minds and imaginations to their greatest effect, to create a more horrifying
experience that will remain in your mind forever. The initial criticisms of ‘The Shining’ on its original
release is a common outlook when experiencing any Kubrick film for the first time. Due to the depth and
mystery behind Kubrick’s work, multiple viewings are essential to receive the full effect of his art. When
Woody Allen talks about the first time he saw ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, he says, “I didn’t like it and I
was very disappointed. And then, three or four months later, I was with some woman in California, and
she was telling me what a wonderful film it was. I went to see it again, and I liked it a lot more. Then a
couple of years later I saw it again, and thought ‘this is a really sensational movie.’ It was one of the few
times in my life where I realized the artist was much ahead of me”12.
One of the criticisms of auteur theory is that it collapses “under the reality of the studio system”13, in
which the producers and the money men would have final cut of the film and complete control over the
artists creative vision. But yet again, using Kubrick as an example, this criticism could be put to the test
by looking at the controversy surrounding his 1971 dystopian nightmare, “A Clockwork Orange”. Upon
its initial release, it was believed that the violence and youth gang culture depicted in the film was the
foundation and influence behind a series of “clockwork killings”. Impressionable teens were so enthralled
by Kubrick’s film, that they imitated what they saw on-screen creating one of cinema’s greatest examples
of life imitating art. Kubrick received many threatening letters, including death threats for the outrage that
his film caused. Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, he withdrew the film from Britain. “A
Clockwork Orange” would not be available on either British television or video until Kubrick’s death in
199914. Although the film was phenomenally successful, the British Public would have to wait another 28
years to experience the charm and horror of Alex DeLarge. But one of the interesting aspects behind the
fiasco was the studio’s total support behind Kubrick’s decision to withdraw the film from circulation in
British theatres. It damaged Warner Bros and Kubrick financially, but according to Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s
brother-in-law, “They didn’t care, they just wanted to make more movies with Stanley”15. The support
that Warner Bros gave Kubrick is a crucial example of how the power of an auteur such as Kubrick can
render the judgment and confidence of a producer or a studio. Stanley Kubrick truly was in charge of
every aspect of his films, and was master to even those gave him the money to create his visions.
Auteur theory is a study in film that can also be connected to genre theory, for there are numerous auteurs
that are identified as working within a specific genre. Famous examples would be John Ford, who worked
predominantly within the western genre, or Alfred Hitchcock, who was icon with thrillers. Stanley
Kubrick however, was a master with most genres. In a career spanning almost 50 years, Stanley Kubrick
had a lot to his name. Steven Spielberg says, “Stanley Kubrick was a chameleon. He never made the same
picture twice. Every single picture is a different genre, a different period, a different story a different
risk”16. Stanley Kubrick managed to cover war (‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Paths Of Glory’), Comedy (‘Dr.
Kubrick on the set of ‘A Clockwork Orange’
Strangelove’), Period Drama (‘Barry Lyndon’), Science Fiction (‘2001: A Space Odyssey’), Romance
(‘Lolita’), Horror (‘The Shining’), Dystopias (‘A Clockwork Orange’), Historical Drama (‘Spartacus’),
Erotic Thriller (‘Eyes Wide Shut’), Crime (‘The Killing’). Although Stanley Kubrick only made 13 films,
the wide, intense library of stories and genres he covered, only added mass to his work.
It is interesting to note how the audience’s relationship with the director and ‘cult of celebrity’ add to the
auteur theory. The way in which the audience strive to see a film because of the name attatched, builds
hype to the director’s level of stardom. Alfred Hitchcock became an icon throughout the 1950’s,
presenting his television series ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ every week. Television audiences found his
exuberant wit and trademark physical features so recognizable and curious, that it developed their thirst to
go out and be entertained by an ‘Alfred Hitchcock movie’. Through the early 1960’s, Stanley Kubrick
was making a reputation for himself as one of the upcoming, aspiring talents of modern cinema, having
directed hit films like ‘The Killing’, ‘Paths Of Glory’, ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Lolita’. Due to Kubrick’s
success, when his 1964 black comedy film ‘Dr. Strangelove’ was released, audiences literally lined up
around the block to witness the next ‘Stanley Kubrick film’. The controversial subject matter surrounding
Kubrick’s films added to the intrigue and the mystery of what he produced for cinemas. The impact of his
work saw that almost every poster for every Kubrick film read: ‘Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket’,
‘Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut’, ‘Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove’. One of the major reasons
why audiences flocked to see these films was because of those two words above the title.
But what were the flaws of Stanley Kubrick? The reason why some disliked his movies was because they
weren’t ‘emotionally engaging’. In Martin Scorsese’s film, ‘Raging Bull’, Scorsese rarely invites us into
the mindset of Jake La Motta, but rather, holds the audience at arms length and allows us to observe his
actions and his relationships, and determines that we make our own judgments on his lifestyle. Stanley
Kubrick kept this story-telling method alive through the entirety of his art. Kubrick films were not
emotional; they were observations and essays ON emotion. William Friedkin states, “the job of an artist is
to reflect society for what it is, that’s what makes Kubrick such an artist”17. Stanley Kubrick merely
showed his audience the world through his own eyes, and probably the most challenging aspect of his
films were that he asked us to provide our own solutions, as the great artists provided questions, not
answers. What made Stanley Kubrick so special was his dedication to change the form of storytelling in
cinema and bring it to the next stage of its life. Steven Spielberg talks about a conversation he once had
with Kubrick: “He kept saying ‘I want to change the form, I want to make a movie that changes the
form’, and I said ‘didn’t you do that with 2001?’ He said ‘just a little bit, but not enough”18. With today’s
technology and advanced methods of storytelling, it is unimaginable what Kubrick would’ve created with
such equipment and opportunities, for ever since he made ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ back in 1968, he was
already light-years ahead of any other story teller.
So, how does auteur theory affect the way we interpret cinema in the modern age? Is it something that
intensifies audiences experience and education of the form, or like many other film theories, is it merely
the foundation of criticism for cinema academics? Whatever it is the auteur theory brings to cinema, it is
unquestionably effective in our education and acknowledgment of special artists. Although cinema is
undoubtedly a collaborative medium, the contribution of these unique authors and their distinct vision is
indeed what makes a film so significant in our culture. And all this can be viewed through the form, and
art, of Stanley Kubrick.
References:
1) Google Books Retrieved December 1 2012
2) LoBrutto, Vincent (1999). Stanley Kubrick: a Biography. Penguin Books. Retrieved December 1
2012
3) LoBrutto, Vincent (1999). Stanley Kubrick: a Biography. Penguin Books. Retrieved December 1
2012
4) William Freidkin interview, “The Visions Of Stanley Kubrick” Documentary, Retrieved
December 1 2012
5) Stanley Kubrick, “Michel Ciment Interviews Stanley Kubrick”, Retrieved December 1 2012
6) Francois Truffaut, ‘Article on Auteur Theory’, Retrieved December 1 2012
7) Interview with Steven Spielberg, “The Haven/Mission Control” Documentary, Retrieved
December 1 2012
8) Interview with Stanley Kubrick. Bean, Robin: ‘How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Cinema.’ Film and Filming, June 1963, Retrieved December 1 2012
9) Paul Durcan, ‘Stanley Kubrick – The Complete Films’, p.10, Retrieved December 2 2012
10) Francois Truffaut on Auteur Theory, Retrieved December 2 2012
11) Stephen King, "Quoted in". Thewordslinger.com. 2008-03-01. Retrieved December 2 2012
12) Woody Allen on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, Retrieved December 2 2012
13) Aljean Harmetz, Round up the Usual Suspects, p. 29. Retrieved December 2 2012
14) ‘Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures’ Documentary, Retrieved December 2 2012
15) Interview with Jan Harlan, ‘Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures’ Documentary, Retrieved
December 2 2012
16) Interview with Steven Spielberg, ‘Spielberg on Kubrick’, Retrieved December 2 2012
17) Interview with William Friedkin, “The Visions Of Stanley Kubrick” Documentary, Retrieved
December 2 2012
18) Interview with Steven Spielberg, ‘Spielberg on Kubrick’, Retrieved December 2 2012