Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an influential and acclaimed Academy Award winning American film director and producer considered among the greatest of the 20th Century. He directed a number of highly acclaimed and sometimes controversial films.

Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928 at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, the first of two children born to Jacques Leonard Kubrick (1901–1985) and his wife Gertrude (née Perveler; 1903–1985); his sister, Barbara, was born in 1934. Jacques Kubrick, whose parents were of Jewish Austrian origin, was a doctor. At Stanley's birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in The Bronx.

Kubrick's father taught him chess at age twelve; the game remained a life-long obsession. When Stanley was thirteen years old, Jacques Kubrick bought him a Graflex camera, triggering Kubrick's fascination with still photography. He was also interested in jazz, attempting a brief career as a drummer.

Kubrick attended William Howard Taft High School 1941–1945. He was a poor student with a meager 67 grade average. On graduation from high school in 1945, when soldiers returning from the Second World War crowded colleges, his poor grades eliminated hopes of higher education. Later in life, Kubrick spoke disdainfully of his education and of education in general, maintaining that nothing about school interested him.

In high school, he was chosen official school photographer for a year. Eventually, he sought jobs on his own, and by graduation time had sold a photographic series to Look magazine in NYC. Kubrick supplemented his income playing "chess for quarters" in Washington Square Park and in various Manhattan chess clubs. He registered for night school at the City College to improve his grade-point average. He worked as a freelance photographer for Look, becoming an apprentice photographer in 1946, and later a full-time staff photographer.

During his Look magazine years, on May 29, 1948, Kubrick married Toba Metz (b. 1930) and they lived in Greenwich Village, divorcing in 1951. It was then that Kubrick began frequenting film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and in the cinemas of New York City. He was particularly inspired by the complex, fluid camera movement of Max Ophüls, whose films influenced Kubrick's later visual style.

Many early-period (1945–1950) photographs by Kubrick were published in the book "Drama and Shadows" (2005, Phaidon Press).

In 1951, Kubrick's friend, Alex Singer, persuaded him to start making short documentaries for the March of Time, a provider of newsreels to movie theatres. Kubrick agreed, and independently financed Day of the Fight (1951). Although the distributor went out of business that year, Kubrick sold Day of the Fight to RKO Pictures for a profit of one hundred dollars. Kubrick quit his job at Look magazine and began working on his second short documentary, Flying Padre (1951), funded by RKO. A third film, The Seafarers (1953), Kubrick's first color film, was a 30-minute promotional short film for the Seafarers' International Union. These three films constitute Kubrick's only surviving work in the documentary genre (he was involved in other similar shorts which have been lost, most notably World Assembly of Youth). He also was second unit director on an episode about the life of Abraham Lincoln for the Omnibus television programme. The Seafarers was announced to be released on an official DVD, but never was; none of these shorts have ever been officially released, though they are widely bootlegged, and clips are used in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures.



Kubrick's focus on narrative feature films began with Fear and Desire (1953). Fear and Desire is about a team of soldiers behind enemy lines in a fictional war. In the finale, the men see that the faces of their enemy are identical to their own (the same cast play all the characters). Kubrick and wife Toba Metz were the only crew on the film, which was written by Kubrick's friend Howard Sackler, later a successful playwright. Fear and Desire garnered respectable reviews, but failed commercially. In later life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, dismissing it as amateur, refusing Fear and Desire's projection in retrospectives and public screenings on establishing himself as a major filmmaker. It is often said that Kubrick bought every print of the film which he could, to keep people from seeing it. At least one copy remained in the hands of a private collector, and the film was subsequently bootlegged on VHS and, later, DVD; all releases of the film are unofficial and in violation of applicable copyright laws.

Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba ended during the making of Fear and Desire. He met his second wife, Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer, Ruth Sobotka, in 1952. They lived together in the East Village from 1952–1955 until their marriage on January 15, 1955; the couple later moved to Hollywood during the summer of 1955. Sobotka, who made a cameo appearance in Kubrick's next film, Killer's Kiss (1954), also served as art director on The Killing (1956). Like Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss is a short feature film, with a running time of slightly more than an hour, of limited commercial and critical success. The film is about a young, heavyweight boxer at the end of his career who is involved with organized crime. Both Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends.

Alex Singer introduced Kubrick to a producer named James B. Harris, and the two became lifelong friends. Their business partnership, Harris-Kubrick Productions, financed Kubrick's next three films. They bought the rights to the Lionel White novel Clean Break, which Kubrick and co-screenwriter Jim Thompson turned into a story about a race track robbery gone wrong. Starring Sterling Hayden, The Killing was Kubrick's first film with a professional cast and crew. The film made impressive use of non-linear time, unusual in 1950s cinema, and, though financially unsuccessful, was Kubrick's first critically successful film. The widespread admiration for The Killing brought Harris-Kubrick Productions to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio offered them its massive collection of copyrighted stories from which to choose their next project. Eventually, they chose The Burning Secret by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Kubrick wrote a screenplay with Calder Willingham, but the deal collapsed before the film got properly underway.

The World War I story, based on Humphrey Cobb's anti-war novel Paths of Glory (1935), is about three innocent French soldiers charged with cowardice by their superior officers as an example to the other soldiers. Kirk Douglas was cast as Colonel Dax, a humanitarian officer trying to prevent the soldiers' execution. Paths of Glory (1957) was Stanley Kubrick's first significant commercial and critical success, establishing him as an up-and-coming cineaste. Critics praised the unvarnished combat scenes, and Kubrick's cinematography: Colonel Dax's march through his soldiers' trench in a single, unbroken reverse-tracking shot has become a classic cinematic trope cited in film classes. Steven Spielberg named this his favorite Kubrick film.

Paths of Glory was filmed in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. During its production, Kubrick met and romanced the young German actress Christiane Harlan (credited by her stage name "Susanne Christian"), who played the only woman speaking part in the film. Kubrick divorced his second wife Ruth Sobotka in 1957. Christiane Susanne Harlan (b. 1932 in Germany) belonged to a theatrical family, and had trained as an actress. She and Kubrick married in 1958 and remained together until his death in 1999. During her marriage to Kubrick, Christiane concentrated on a career as a painter. In addition to raising Christiane's young daughter Katharina (b. 1953) from her first marriage to the late German actor, Werner Bruhns (d. 1977), the couple had two daughters: Anya (b. 1958) and Vivian (b. 1960). Christiane's brother Jan Harlan was Kubrick's executive producer from 1975 onwards.

On returning to the United States, Kubrick worked for six months on the Marlon Brando vehicle One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Later, Kubrick claimed Brando forced him from the film, because Brando wanted to direct it himself. Kubrick languished working on unproduced screenplays (including, notably, Jim Thompson's treatment, Lunatic at Large) until Kirk Douglas asked him to assume direction of Spartacus (1960) from Anthony Mann who, two weeks into shooting, was fired by the studio because he lacked leadership (or, more likely, for disagreeing with producer-star Kirk Douglas).

Based upon the true story of a doomed uprising of Roman slaves, Spartacus established Stanley Kubrick as a major director. The production, however, was difficult; creative differences arose between Kubrick and Douglas, the star and producer of the film. Frustrated by lack of creative control, Kubrick later largely disowned its authorship. The Douglas-Kubrick creative control battles destroyed their work relationship from Paths of Glory. Years later, Kirk Douglas referred to Stanley Kubrick as "a talented shit". Spartacus was a major critical and commercial success, but its embattled production convinced Kubrick to find ways of working with Hollywood financing while remaining independent of its production system. Kubrick referred to Hollywood production as "film by fiat, film by frenzy", and this reasoning was behind Kubrick's moving to England in 1962.

In 1962, Kubrick moved to England to film Lolita, and resided there for the rest of his life. Unsurprisingly, Lolita was Kubrick's first major controversy. The book by Vladimir Nabokov, dealing with an affair between a middle-aged pedophile and a twelve-year-old girl, already was notorious when Kubrick embarked on the project, however it was also steadily achieving popularity; eventually, the difficult subject matter was mocked in the film's tagline, perhaps to gain attention: "How did they ever make a film of Lolita?" Nabokov wrote a three-hundred page screenplay for Kubrick, which the director abandoned; a second draft by Nabokov, roughly half the length of its first, was revamped by Kubrick into the final screenplay. (Nabokov estimated that 20% of his material made it into the film.)

Despite changing Lolita's age from twelve years to fourteen years, which was a more acceptable age for commercial appeal at the time, several scenes in the final film had to be re-edited to allow the film's release. The resulting film toned down what were considered the novel's more perverse aspects, leaving much to the viewer's imagination, some viewers have even wondered whether Humbert and Lolita actually embarked on a sexual affair, as most of their relationship, sexually, is implied and suggested. Later, Kubrick commented that, had he known the severity of the censorship, he probably would not have made the film. However, Kubrick always spoke highly of James Mason, who portrayed Humbert Humbert in the film, identifying him as one of the actors with whom he most enjoyed working. Lolita also was the first time Kubrick worked with British comic Peter Sellers, a collaboration which proved one of the most successful of his early career, most notable for Dr. Strangelove (1964). Oswald Morris was the director of photography.

Lolita's release in 1962 was surrounded by immense hype, which was responsible for the box office success at the time; it was also given an "Adults Only" rating, since ratings for film and literature were not applicable at the time of Lolita's release. Critical reception for the film was mixed, many praising it for its daring subject, others surprised by the lack of intimacy between Lolita and Humbert. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing of an Adapted Screenplay, and Sue Lyon, who played the title role, won a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer Actress.

Kubrick's next film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), became a cult film. The screenplay—based upon the novel Red Alert, by ex-RAF flight lieutenant Peter George (writing as Peter Bryant)—was co-written by Kubrick, George, and American satirist Terry Southern.

Dr. Strangelove is often considered a masterpiece of black humor. While Red Alert is a serious, cautionary tale of accidental atomic war for Cold War-era readers, Dr. Strangelove accidentally evolved into what Kubrick called a "nightmare comedy." Originally intended as a thriller, Kubrick found the conditions leading to nuclear war so absurd that the story became dark and funny rather than thrilling; Kubrick reconceived it as comedy, recruiting Terry Southern for the required anarchic irony.

Peter Sellers, memorable as 'Clare Quilty' in Lolita, was hired to simultaneously play four roles in Dr. Strangelove. Eventually, Sellers played three, due to an injured leg and difficulty in mastering the Texan accent of bomber pilot Major "King" Kong. Later, Kubrick called Sellers "amazing," but lamented that his energy rarely lasted beyond two or three takes. To capture the actor's limited energy, Kubrick set up two cameras to film Sellers's improvisation. Strangelove often is cited as one of Sellers's best films, and proof of his comic genius.

Kubrick's decision to film a Cold War thriller as a black comedy was a daring artistic risk that paid off for him and Columbia Pictures. Coincidentally, that same year, Columbia Studios released the dramatic nuclear war thriller Fail-Safe. Its close similarity with Dr Strangelove prompted Kubrick to consider suing the makers of that film, but he decided against it. However, Fail-Safe was based on a novel published in 1962.

Dr. Strangelove portrays a deliberate American nuclear attack launched against the Soviet Union, by renegade U.S.A.F. General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden). In real time, the film's duration, the story intercuts among three locales: (i) Burpleson Air Force Base, where RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) tries stopping the mad Gen. Ripper; (ii) the Pentagon War Room, where the U.S. President (Sellers), U.S.A.F. General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), and (officially ex-) Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove (Sellers) try stopping (or not) General Ripper's B-52 bombers enroute to dropping nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union; and (iii) Major Kong's (Slim Pickens) B-52 bomber where he and his crew of ordinary airmen, never knowing it is false, doggedly try to complete their mission. Production designer Ken Adam's sets for the film—especially the War Room in the Pentagon—are considered classic film production design.

In belittling the sacrosanct norms of the political culture of mutually assured destruction (MAD) as the squabbling of intellectual children, Dr. Strangelove foreshadowed the cultural upheavals of the late 1960s and was enormously successful with the nascent American counter-culture. Dr. Strangelove earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director) and the New York Film Critics' Best Director award. Kubrick's successful Dr. Strangelove persuaded the studios that he was an auteur who could be trusted to deliver popular films despite his unusual ideas. Director of Photography was Gilbert Taylor, a noted cinematographer who shot Star Wars and A Hard Day's Night.

Kubrick spent five years developing his next film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which was photographed in Super Panavision 70. Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, expanding on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". The screenplay and the novel were written simultaneously. The screenplay is credited to Kubrick and Clarke, while the novel, published in tandem with the film's release, is credited only to Clarke. The novel and the film deviate substantially from each other, with the novel explaining a great deal of what the film leaves deliberately ambiguous. Clarke and Kubrick later spoke highly of one another. Incidentally, Clarke's follow up, 2010: Odyssey Two, follows the events of the movie version of 2001, as opposed to the novel version. This is likely due to the cultural impact of Kubrick's film.

The film's special effects, overseen by Kubrick and engineered by special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (Silent Running, Blade Runner), proved ground-breaking and inspired many of the special effects-driven films which were to follow the success of 2001. Manufacturing companies were consulted as to what the design of both special-purpose and everyday objects would look like in the future. At the time of the movie's release, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that a generation of engineers would design real spacecraft based upon 2001 "even if it isn't the best way to do it". Despite nominations in the directing, writing, and producing categories, the only Academy Award Kubrick ever received was for supervising the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film is notable for its use of classical music, such as Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube waltz. Kubrick also made use of the music of contemporary, avant-garde Hungarian composer György Ligeti, although this was done without Ligeti's consent. The appearance of Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem on the 2001 soundtrack was the first wide commercial exposure of Ligeti's work. This use of existing music was not originally planned and composer Alex North composed a full length score for the film. However, Kubrick made a last-minute decision to substitute the already recorded original music with the temporary tracks he had used during editing.

Artistically, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a radical departure from Kubrick's previous films. It contains only 45 minutes of dialogue, over a running time of over two and a half hours (150 minutes). The dialogue is largely superfluous to the images and music. Nevertheless it outlines the 'story' while presenting mankind as dissociated from itself and its surroundings. Clarke's characters function either as extensions of the story or else as anthropological archetypes. The story and plot are obscure for most of the film's duration and its ambiguous, perplexing ending continues to fascinate contemporary audiences and critics. After this film, Kubrick would never experiment so radically with special effects or narrative form, but the calculated ambiguity of his films remained a trademark for the rest of his career.

Despite being an unorthodox science fiction film, 2001 was an enormous commercial success and became a pop culture phenomenon. However, the film was not an immediate smash. Were it not for a six-week exhibition contract, the film might not have had enough time in cinemas to have benefited from building word-of-mouth popularity. The film's ticket sales were low during the first two weeks of its release, and it was nearly withdrawn from theaters. Actor Jack Nicholson claims that Kubrick told him that 217 people walked out of the exhibitor's screening, including the studio head. Arthur C. Clarke has said that an MGM executive commented on the screening by saying: "Well, that's the end of Stanley Kubrick."

Initial critical reaction was also extremely hostile, with critics attacking the film's lack of dialogue, its slow pacing, and seemingly impenetrable storyline. The film's only initial defender was Penelope Gilliat, who called it "some kind of a great film". Following the film's success, however, many critics later revised their opinions.

Audiences slowly embraced the film, especially the 1960s counterculture audience, who loved the movie's "Star Gate" sequence, a seemingly psychedelic journey to the infinite reaches of the cosmos. Younger moviegoers often saw the film many times over, resulting in a cult following of repeat viewers. Supposedly, if one were to ingest LSD at the beginning of the movie, the "Star Gate" sequence would start at roughly the same time that the drug was in full effect. This phenomenon prompted the film's distributors to add an LSD-allusive tagline ("The Ultimate Trip") to the movie's advertising poster. Paradoxically, Kubrick won total creative control from Hollywood by succeeding with one of the most thematically "difficult" films ever to win wide commercial release.

Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey are as widespread as its popularity. Despite having been made in 1968, it still prompts debate today. When critic Joseph Gelmis asked Kubrick about the meaning of the film, Kubrick replied http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q13.html:

They are the areas I prefer not to discuss, because they are highly subjective and will differ from viewer to viewer. In this sense, the film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded.

2001: A Space Odyssey is likely Kubrick's most famous and influential film. Steven Spielberg called it his generation's big bang, focusing its attention upon the Soviet-American space race. The special effects techniques Kubrick pioneered were later developed by Ridley Scott and George Lucas for films such as Alien and Star Wars. 2001 is particularly notable as one of the few films realistically presenting travel in outer space: the scenes in outer space are silent; weightlessness is constant, with characters strapped in place; when characters wear pressure suits, only their breathing is audible.

The film's primary themes include: the origins of evolution; sentient computers; extra-terrestrial beings; the search for one's place in the universe; and rebirth. All these themes are seen within a cold, foreboding light. Books have been written about interpretations of the film. Even Arthur C. Clarke is on record as being ignorant of what Stanley Kubrick really had in mind when making the film, going so far as to say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is ninety per cent Stanley Kubrick's vision. The film's striking cinematography was the work of legendary British director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth who would later photograph classic films such as Cabaret and Superman.

After 2001, Kubrick sought a project which he could quickly film with a small budget. He found it in A Clockwork Orange (1971). His film version is a dark, shocking exploration of violence in human society. It was released with an 'X' rating in the United States, though in 1973 it was edited in order that it could be re-classified with an 'R' rating and was re-released. Some of the early 80s VHS releases carry this R-rated version, although all other releases past that, including the Stanley Kubrick Collection editions, have the original X-rated version.

Based upon the famous novel by Anthony Burgess, the film is the story of a teenage hooligan, Alex, (Malcolm McDowell), who gleefully torments, beats, robs, and rapes without conscience or remorse. Finally imprisoned, Alex undergoes psychiatric aversion treatment to be cured of his instinctively reflexive violence. This conditions him physically unable to act violently, yet also renders him helpless and incapable of moral choice, resulting in a consequently brutal come-uppance at the hands of his victims.

Kubrick photographed A Clockwork Orange quickly and almost entirely on location in and around London. Despite the low-tech nature of the film, when compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick was highly innovative, e.g. throwing a camera from a rooftop to achieve the desired viewer disorientation. For the score, Kubrick had electronic music composer Wendy Carlos, at the time known as Walter Carlos, (Switched-On Bach), adapt famous classical works such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the Moog synthesizer.

The film was extremely controversial because of its explicitly depicted teenage gang-rape and violence. Released the same year as Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Don Siegel's Dirty Harry, the three films sparked ferocious debate in the media about the social effects of cinematic violence. The controversy was exacerbated when copycat violence was committed in England, by criminals wearing the same costumes as characters in A Clockwork Orange. The story is narrated in Nadsat, a slang language comprising many anglicized Soviet words: the gang refer to each other as "droogie", from the Russian word for "friend."

When Kubrick and family were threatened with death, resulting from the social controversy, he took the unusual step of removing the film from circulation in Britain. The film was not released again in the United Kingdom until its re-release in 2000, a year after Stanley Kubrick's death. In banning his film in Britain, he showed the unprecedented power he held over his distributor, Warner Brothers. For the remainder of his career he held total control of every aspect of his films, including the marketing and the advertising; such was Warner Brothers' faith in his projects.

Kubrick's next film, released in 1975, was an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon, also known as Barry Lyndon, a picaresque novel about an 18th century gambler and social climber who slowly insinuates himself to English high society. It would be Kubrick's least-appreciated post-Strangelove film, despite strong acting (by Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, and Irish actress Marie Kean) and Kubrick's innovative cinematography and attention to period detail.

Some critics, especially Pauline Kael, one of Kubrick's greatest detractors, found Barry Lyndon a cold, slow-moving, and lifeless film. Its measured pace and length—more than three hours—put off many American critics and audiences, however, the film was well-reviewed in the U.S. by noted critics Rex Reed and Richard Schickel. Time Magazine published a cover story about the film, and Kubrick was nominated for three Academy Awards. As with most of his films, Barry Lyndon's reputation has grown through the years, particularly among other filmmakers. Director Martin Scorsese cited it as his favorite Kubrick film. Steven Spielberg has praised its "impeccable technique," though, when younger, he famously described it "like going through the Prado without lunch".

As in his other films, Kubrick's cinematography and lighting techniques are innovative. Most famously, interior scenes were photographed with a specially-adapted, high-speed still camera lens (originally invented for NASA) allowing many scenes to be lit only with candlelight, creating two-dimensional, diffused light images reminiscent of 18th century painting. Kubrick's blending of music, mise en scene, costume and action set standards for period drama that few other films have matched. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, more than any other Kubrick film. Despite this, Barry Lyndon was not a box office success in the US, however, the film found a great audience in Europe, particularly in France.

Like almost all other Kubrick films, "Barry Lyndon" has a remarkable score, comprised most notably of one of Franz Schubert's piano trios.

Kubrick's work pace slowed considerably after Barry Lyndon; he did not make another film until The Shining. Released in 1980, it is an adaptation of Stephen King's popular horror novel. It stars Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in the story of a failed writer who takes a job as an off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a high-class resort deep in the Colorado mountains. The job demands spending the winter in the isolated hotel. His son, Danny, is gifted with telepathy, called "shining," and has visions of the past and the future.

To Danny, the hotel displays increasingly horrible, phantasmagoric images, notably the apparition of two girls murdered years before by their father, the hotel's caretaker. Jack is slowly driven mad by the haunted Overlook Hotel until collapsing into homicidal psychosis, then trying to kill his family with an axe.

It was originally thought that the film was shot at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, however, it was at the Elstree and the Pinewood studios, near London, where the film sets were built. The Overlook Hotel exterior is that of the Timberline Lodge ski resort on Mount Hood, Oregon, U.S.A. Kubrick extensively used the newly-invented Steadicam (a spring-mounted camera support) for smooth movement in enclosed spaces, to convey the haunted hotel's claustrophobic oppression of the family.

More than any other of his films, The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick-as-megalomanic-perfectionist. Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of takes of certain scenes (ca. 1.3 million film ft. were exposed), particularly plaguing actress Shelley Duvall. His daughter, Vivian Kubrick, shot a short documentary film of the production. It is available in the DVD release of the film, it is one of few documents of Kubrick in action in the latter half of his career.

The film opened to mostly negative reviews, but did very well, commercially, with audiences and made Warner Brothers a profit. As with most Kubrick films, subsequent critical reaction reviews the film more favorably. Stephen King was dissatisfied with the movie, calling Kubrick "a man who thinks too much and feels too little". Later, in 1997, King collaborated with Mick Garris to create a television mini-series version of the novel. Since then, King has spoken with less hostility toward Kubrick and his film (it was said at the time of the mini-series initial release that King agreed to not speak publicly about Kubrick's version if he were given the rights to do the miniseries). However, in a later interview on the Bravo channel King admitted that the first time he watched Kubrick's adaptation he found it to be "dreadfully upsetting."

Among horror movie fans, The Shining is a classic cult film, often appearing with The Exorcist (1974) and Halloween (1978) at the top of best horror film lists. Some of its images, such as an antique elevator disgorging a tidal wave of blood, are among the most recognizable, widely-known images from any Stanley Kubrick film. The Shining renewed Warner Brothers faith in Kubrick's ability to make artistically satisfying and profitable films after the commercial failure that was Barry Lyndon in the United States. As a pop culture phenomenon, the film has been the object of countless parodies, from The Simpsons and MAD Magazine to recent films such as Seed Of Chucky.

It was seven years until Kubrick's next film, Full Metal Jacket (1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel, The Short-Timers, starring Matthew Modine as Joker, Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother, R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and Vincent D'Onofrio as Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence. The film begins at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, U.S.A., where Senior Drill Sgt Hartman relentlessly pushes his new men through basic training to transform them from worthless "maggots" to Marine killers. Pvt Pyle, a fat, slow-witted recruit, is unable to cope with the program and slowly cracks under the strain, resulting, on the eve of graduation, in Pvt Pyle's shooting and killing Sgt Hartman before killing himself as he repeats the by-then-familiar Marine mantra: "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine…" The scene ends the boot-camp portion of the story.

The second half of the film follows Joker, since promoted to sergeant, as he tries to stay sane in Vietnam. As a reporter for the United States Military's newspaper the Stars and Stripes, Joker occupies war's middle ground, using wit and sarcasm to detach himself from the war. Though an American and a member of the United States Marine Corps, he also is a reporter and so is compelled to abide the ethics of the profession. The film then follows an infantry platoon's advance on and through Hue City, decimated by the street fighting of the Tet Offensive. The film climaxes in a battle between Joker's platoon and a sniper hiding in the rubble; she almost kills Joker until his reporter partner shoots and severely injures her. Joker then kills her to put her out of her misery.

Filming a Vietnam War film in England was a considerable challenge for Stanley Kubrick and team. Much filming was in the Docklands area of London, with the ruined-city set created by production designer Anton Furst. This helped make the film visually very different from the other, contemporary Vietnam War films Platoon and Hamburger Hill. Instead of being set in the tropical, Southeast-Asian jungle, the second half of the story unfolds in a city, illuminating the urban warfare aspect of a war otherwise perceived as fought exclusively in a jungle. Kubrick said to film critic Gene Siskel that his attraction to Gustav Hasford's book was because it was "neither anti-war or pro-war", held "no moral or political position", and was primarily concerned with "the way things are."

Full Metal Jacket received mixed critical review, but found a reasonably large audience, despite being over-shadowed by Oliver Stone's Platoon. This was one reason for Kubrick not making Aryan Papers, in fear that its publicity would be stolen by Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List.

Stanley Kubrick was a mute presence in Hollywood in the ten-odd years after the release of Full Metal Jacket (1987); many believed that he had retired from film-making. Occasionally, rumours surfaced about possible, new Kubrick projects, including Aryan Papers and A.I. (eventually produced after Kubrick's death, directed by Steven Spielberg). Stanley Kubrick's final film would be Eyes Wide Shut, starring then-married actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as an upper middle class Manhattan couple on a sexual odyssey.

The story of Eyes Wide Shut is based on Arthur Schnitzler's novella Traumnovelle (in English a.k.a. Dream Story), and follows Dr. William Harford's journey to the sexual underworld of New York City, after his wife, Alice, shatters his faith in her fidelity when she confesses to nearly giving him, and their daughter, up for one night with another man.

After trespassing upon the rituals of a sinister, mysterious sexual cult, Dr. Harford thinks twice before seeking sexual revenge against his wife, and learns he and his family might be in danger.

The film was in production for more than two years, and two of the main members of the cast, Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh, were replaced in the course of the filming. Although set in New York City, the film was mostly shot in London soundstages, with little location shooting. Shots of Manhattan itself were pick-up shots filmed in New York City by a second-unit crew. Because of Kubrick's secrecy about the film, mostly inaccurate rumors abounded about its plot and content. Most especially, the story's sexual content provoked much exaggerated speculation; some journalists writing that it would be "the sexiest film ever made." The casting of the celebrity-actor couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman increased the magnitude of pre-release journalistic hyperbole.

In 1999, four days after screening a final cut of Eyes Wide Shut for his family, the lead actor and actress, and Warner Brothers executives, the seventy-year-old director Stanley Kubrick died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was buried next to his favorite tree in Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire, England, U.K.

The film did smashing box-office business, which considerably slowed down in the weeks after the film's release. Critics mostly were negative towards the film, attacking its slow pace and perceived emotional inertia.

According to his friends and family, Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick's personal favorite of his own films. Contrary to that, however, in 2006, actor R. Lee Ermey went on record as saying Kubrick told him in a telephone talk, shortly before his death, that Eyes Wide Shut was "a piece of shit" and that the critics would "have him for lunch". http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1888077,00.html Yet, Todd Field (director, In the Bedroom, Little Children) who acted in Eyes Wide Shut refutes Ermey's statements, "Stanley was absolutely thrilled with the film. He was still working on the film when he died, and he probably died because he finally relaxed. It was one of the happiest weekends of his life, he had just shown the first cut to Terry, Tom, and Nicole. He would have kept working on it, like he did on all of his films, but I know he was over the moon about the film, as I was told this from people who were with him daily throughout post-production. My production partner was Stanley’s assistant for thirty years." Field stated that Kubrick advised him to stay away from Ermey: " I’d originally thought about R. Lee Ermey for In the Bedroom, and I talked to Stanley a lot about that film, and, all I can say, is Stanley was adamant that I not work with Ermey, for all kinds of reasons that I won't get into, because there is no reason to do that to anyone, even if that person is saying slanderous things about Stanley, that I know, for a fact, are completely untrue."http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php/20061020fieldkubrick

Eyes Wide Shut, like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange before it, faced censorship before release. In the United States and Canada, digitally manufactured silhouette figures were strategically placed to mask explicit copulation scenes. It was done to secure an "R" rating from the MPAA. To Europe, and the rest of the world, the film has been released uncut, in its original form.

An exacting perfectionist who often worked for years on pre-production planning and research, Kubrick had a number of unrealized projects during his career. All but one were never completed as films, but are of some interest to fans of the director.

Most famously, he never filmed his much-researched biopic of Napoleon (Bonaparte) I of France, which was originally to star Jack Nicholson as Napoleon after Kubrick saw him in Easy Rider. Kubrick and Nicholson eventually worked together on The Shining. After years of preproduction, the movie was set aside indefinitely in favor of more economically feasible projects. As late as 1987, Kubrick stated that he had not given up on the project, mentioning that he had read almost 500 books on the historical figure. He was convinced that a film worthy of the subject had not yet appeared.

After the success of 2001 Kubrick planned a large-scale biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte. He did much research, read books about the French Emperor, and wrote a preliminary screenplay. With assistants, he meticulously created a card-catalogue of the places and deeds of Napoleon's inner circle during its operative years. Kubrick scouted locations, planning to film large portions of the story in the historical places where Napoleon's life occurred.

In notes to his financial backers, preserved in The Kubrick Archives, Kubrick told them he was unsure how his Napoleon film would turn out, but that he expected to create 'the best movie ever made.' Ultimately, the project was cancelled for three reasons: (i) the prohibitive costliness of location filming; (ii) the release, in the West, of Sergei Bondarchuk's epic film version of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1968), and (iii) the commercial failure of Bondarchuk's Napoleon-themed film Waterloo (1970). Stanley Kubrick's screenplay for this film has been published on the Internet. Much of his historical research would influence Barry Lyndon (1975), set in the late eighteenth century, just before Napoleon's wars.

In the early 1990s, Kubrick almost went into production on a film of Louis Begley's Wartime Lies, the story of a boy and his mother in hiding during the Holocaust. The first draft screenplay, titled "Aryan Papers", had been penned by Kubrick himself. Kubrick chose not to make the film due to the release of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust-themed Schindler's List in 1993. In addition, according to Kubrick's wife, Christiane, the subject itself had become too depressing and difficult for the director. Kubrick eventually concluded that an accurate film about the Holocaust was beyond the capacity of cinema.

One Kubrick project was eventually completed by another director, Steven Spielberg. Throughout the 1980s and early 90s, Kubrick collaborated with various writers (including Brian Aldiss, Sara Maitland and Ian Watson) on a project called by various names, including "Pinocchio" and "Artificial Intelligence."

The film was developed expanding on Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long," which Kubrick and his writers turned into a feature-length film in three acts. It was a futuristic fairy tale about a robot which resembles and behaves as a child, who is sold as a temporary surrogate to a family whose only son is in a coma. The robot, however, learns of this, and out of sympathy is left abandoned in the woods by his owners instead of being returned to the factory for destruction. The rest of the story concerns the robot's attempts in becoming a real boy by seeking “Blue Fairy” (a reference to Pinocchio), in order to regain his mother's love and acceptance once more, as his love was hard-wired into him, and hence everlasting. The journey would take the boy-robot (referred to as a "Mecha" ) thousands of years.

Kubrick reportedly held long telephone discussions with Steven Spielberg regarding the film, and, according to Spielberg, at one point stated that the subject matter was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his. In 2001, following Kubrick's death, Spielberg took the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers, and composed a new screenplay, and in association with what remained of Kubrick's production unit, made the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, starring Haley Joel Osment.

The film contains a posthumous producing credit for Stanley Kubrick at the beginning, and the brief dedication "For Stanley" at the end. The film contains many recurrent Kubrick motifs, such as an omniscient narrator, an extreme form of the three act structure, the themes of humanity and inhumanity, and a sardonic view of Freudian psychology.

A.I. was not a major box office or critical success, and the unorthodox combination of two vastly different directorial visions was considered by some critics a confusing failure unappealing to fans of both Spielberg and Kubrick.

On November 1, 2006, Philip Hobbs, Kubrick's son-in-law, announced that he will be shepherding a film treatment of Lunatic at Large, which was commissioned by Kubrick for treatment from noir pulp novelist Jim Thompson in the 1950s, but had become lost until Kubrick's death in 1999.

In 1976 Kubrick agreed to visit the recently completed 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios to provide advice on how to light the enormous soundstage, which had been built for and was being prepped for the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Kubrick agreed to consult when it was promised that nobody would ever know of his involvement. This was honored until 2000, when the fact was mentioned in the documentary on the making of "The Spy Who Loved Me" on the special edition DVD of the 007 movie.

Kubrick was often unwilling to discuss personal matters publicly, or to speak publicly at all. Over time, his image in the media has ranged anywhere from being a reclusive genius to a megalomaniacal lunatic shut off from the world. Since his death, Kubrick's friends and family have denied this. Kubrick clearly left behind a strong family and many close friends. Many of those who worked for him speak highly in his favor. The rumor regarding his reclusiveness is largely a myth, and may have resulted from his aversion to travel once installed at St. Albans. Kubrick was afraid of flying and refused to take airplane trips, so he rarely left England over the last forty years of his life.

Kubrick once told a friend that he went to London (about 40 minutes by car) four to five times a year solely for appointments with his dentist. Kubrick also shunned the Hollywood system and its publicity machine. His appearance was not well known in his later years, and a British man by the name of Alan Conway successfully pretended he was Kubrick to meet several well-known actors and get into fancy clubs. Conway is the subject of the film Colour Me Kubrick (2005), written by Kubrick's assistant Anthony Frewin and directed by Brian Cook, Kubrick's First Assistant Director for 25 years.

Kubrick was constantly in contact with family members and business associates, often by telephone, and contacted collaborators at all hours for conversations lasting from under a minute to several hours. Many of Kubrick's admirers and friends spoke of these telephone conversations with great affection and nostalgia after his death, most especially Michael Herr and Steven Spielberg. In his memoir of Kubrick, Herr said that dozens of people claim to have spoken to Kubrick on the day of his death and remarked "I believe all of them." Kubrick also frequently invited various people to his house, ranging from actors to close friends, admired film directors, writers, and intellectuals.

Kubrick was also an animal lover. He owned many dogs and cats throughout his life and showed an extraordinary affection for them. Christiane, Kubrick's widow, said in her book version of Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures that Kubrick brought his cats to the editing room to spend time with them that was lost while he was shooting his films. Matthew Modine remembers Kubrick being deeply upset when a family of rabbits was accidentally killed during the making of Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick was so upset that he canceled shooting for the rest of the day. Philip Kaplan, one of Kubrick's lawyers and friends, reports that Stanley once cancelled a meeting with him and another lawyer who had flown to London from the United States for the meeting, at the last moment, because he sat up all night with a dying cat and was in no shape to participate. Kaplan also reports that the huge kitchen table at St. Albans was supported by an undulating base and that within each curved space was a dog, most of no recognizable breed and some not notably friendly to strangers.

Kubrick had a reputation of being tactless and rude to many people he worked with. Some of Kubrick's collaborators have complained of a coldness or lack of sympathy for the feelings of others on his part. Although Kubrick became close friends with Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell during filming, Kubrick abruptly terminated the friendship soon after the film was complete. McDowell was deeply hurt by this and the schism between the two men lasted until Kubrick's death. Michael Herr, in his otherwise positive memoir to Kubrick, complains that Kubrick was extremely cheap and very greedy about money. He states that Kubrick was a "terrible" man to do business with and that the director was upset until the day he died that Jack Nicholson made more money from The Shining than he did. Science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss was fired from Kubrick's never completed project AI for vacationing with his family in violation of his contract, even though Kubrick had put the project on hold at the time. Kubrick brought in other writers to help write the AI script, but fired them because they were useless. Kirk Douglas often commented on Kubrick's unwillingness to compromise, his out of control ego and ruthless pursuit to make a film his own distinct work of art instead of a group effort (it must be noted, however, that in interviews Kubrick often acknowledged and admired the effort of his team, especially those who made the special effects for 2001 possible). However, Douglas has acknowledged that a large part of his dislike for Kubrick was caused by Kubrick's consistently negative statements about Spartacus. James Earl Jones, despite his admiration for Kubrick on an artistic level, spoke negatively of his experience on Dr. Strangelove, saying that Kubrick was disrespectful to actors, using them as instruments in a grand design rather than allowing them to be creative artists in their own right. George C. Scott, who admired Kubrick in retrospect for reportedly being one of the few people who could routinely beat him in chess, famously resented Kubrick using his most over-the-top performances for the final cut of Dr. Strangelove, after promising they would not be seen by audiences. Kubrick's crew has stated that he was notorious for not complimenting anyone and rarely showed admiration for his co-workers for fear it would make them complacent. Kubrick complimented them on their work only after the movie was finished, unless he felt their work was "genius." The only actors that Kubrick called "genius" were Peter Sellers, James Mason and Malcolm McDowell.

Upon purchasing the Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, England, Kubrick set up his life so that family and business were one. He purchased top-of-the-line film editing equipment and owned all of his own cameras. Children and animals would frequently come in and out of the room as he worked on a script or met with an actor.

Although Kubrick was greatly disliked by many of the people he worked with, many speak kindly of him, including co-workers and friends Jack Nicholson, Diane Johnson, Tom Cruise, Joe Turkel, Con Pederson, Sterling Hayden, Scatman Crothers, Carl Solomon, Ryan O'Neal, Anthony Frewin, Ian Watson, John Milius, Jocelyn Pook, Sydney Pollack, R. Lee Ermey, and others. Michael Herr's memoir to Kubrick and Matthew Modine's book Full Metal Jacket Diary show a different, much more kind, sane and warm version of Kubrick than the conventional view of him as cold, demanding and impersonal. In a series of interviews found on the DVD of Eyes Wide Shut, a teary eyed Tom Cruise remembers Kubrick with great affection. Nicole Kidman also shares his sentiments. Shelley Winters, when asked what she thought of him, answered, "A gift." Shelley Duvall, who played Wendy in The Shining did not always get along with Kubrick, as seen in The Making of the Shining, but has said that in retrospect it was a great experience that made her smarter—though she'd never want to do it again. Also, Malcolm McDowell in retrospect said that he felt some of his statements about Kubrick were "unfair" and were a "cry out" to Kubrick to call him. He has mused that it was because Kubrick saw some of Alex (the main character in A Clockwork Orange) in McDowell, and McDowell has commented on how much this termination of friendship personally hurt him. McDowell said that he was very sad when Kubrick died.

In his memoir of Kubrick, Michael Herr, his personal friend and co-writer of the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket, wrote:

Herr also wrote that Kubrick owned guns and that he did not think war is entirely a bad thing. In the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Herr says "…he also accepted to acknowledge that, of all the things war is, it is also very beautiful." Kubrick, according to Ian Watson, reportedly said of the pre-1997 socialist Labour Party “If the Labourites ever get in, I’ll leave the country.” Watson explains that Kubrick was extremely opposed to laws on taxing the rich and welfare in general. http://www.ianwatson.info/kubrick.htm Michael Herr said of initial reactions to Full Metal Jacket "The political left will call Kubrick a fascist." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/kubrick1987.htm Despite that Full Metal Jacket is often cited as an anti-war film, in his 1987 interview with Gene Siskel called Candidly Kubrick, Kubrick has said, "Full Metal Jacket suggests there is more to say about war than it is just bad." In the same interview he said that everything serious the drill instructor says, such as "A rifle is only a tool, it is a hard heart that kills" is completely true. Though some have said Kubrick disliked America, Michael Herr says, on the other hand, that America was all he talked about and that he often thought of moving back. It was said that Kubrick was sent VHS tapes from American friends of pro-football, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and other television shows which he could not get in the United Kingdom. Kubrick also told Siskel he was not anti-American and that he thought that America was a good country, though he did not think that Ronald Reagan was a good President. He also said he thought that people in the world did not take the nuclear threat of the time as seriously as they should and he was extremely suspicious of centralized banking systems. Some claim this evidence suggests Kubrick's views lean Right while others still say he leans Left. It is unknown, however, if Kubrick belonged to any political group.

Kubrick's works depict his own view of human nature and are critical of moral/political stances based on other views of human nature. For example, in A Clockwork Orange, the police are as violent and vulgar as the droogs, and Kubrick depicts both the subversive writer Mr. Alexander (a figure of the Left) and the authoritarian Minister of the Interior (a figure of the Right), as manipulative, hypocritical and sinister. In regard to A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick said to the New York Times,

He also said in the same interview:

Kubrick's earlier work can be seen as more liberal than his later work. Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory and Spartacus in Spartacus are comparable to liberals, and the satire of government and military in Dr. Strangelove seems to point to a liberal political perspective. Kubrick's more mature works are more pessimistic and suspicious of the so-called innate goodness of mankind. In a letter to the New York Times in response to Fred M. Hechinger declaring A Clockwork Orange "fascist", Kubrick wrote:

Kubrick shares much of this view with Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis and The Social Contract (not to be confused with Rousseau's) and author Arthur Koestler who is famous for writing The Ghost In The Machine, both of whom Kubrick quotes in his defense against Hechinger. Both authors (Koestler through psychology and Ardrey through anthropology) search for the cause of humanity's capacity for death and destruction and both, like Kubrick, are suspicious of the liberal belief in innate goodness of mankind (which Ardrey and Kubrick attribute to Rousseau, who, in Ardrey's words: "Fathered the romantic fallacy") and Behaviourism, especially what they consider "radical Behaviourism", whom they blame primarily on B.F. Skinner. (Mainstream anthropology contests Ardrey's view of man having an ancestor that was unremorsefully murderous and destructive, and mainstream psychologists' belief in innate empathy contradicts Koestler's or Kubrick's view of man as innately evil, or sadistic and unempathetic).

Reading Ardrey's African Genesis reveals he shared Kubrick's bleak view of man, and the growing concern of the juvenile delinquent, as Ardrey writes:

:"Society flatters itself in thinking that it has rejected the juvenile delinquent; the delinquent has rejected society. And in the shadowed byways of his world so consummately free, this ingenious, normal adolescent human creature has created a way of life in perfect image of his animal needs." Such a description brings to mind Alex, the delinquent thug in A Clockwork Orange. Ardrey also says society might eventually domesticate man through slavery and cure his innate urge to kill and destroy: :"We and our greater philosophers must grant, I believe, that the masters of a universal society with the aid of a captive science might just possibly succeed in producing, over a long period, a lasting answer to the problem of our animal nature: a universal human slave inherently obedient to other people's reason."

This brings to mind the Minister of the Interior and his proposal for the answer to street violence in Kubrick's film. However Ardrey also believes: :"Whether through sentimental attachment or rational choice, I find myself moved to prefer the wild creatures among who I was born to the more literal Homo sapiens that science and tyranny might produce."

The clergyman in A Clockwork Orange, whom Kubrick has called "the moral voice of the story" says, "Goodness must come from within. Goodness must be chosen. If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." In fact, Kubrick said in an interview with The New York Times that his view of man was closer to the Christian view than humanistic or Jewish views, as he said, "I mean, it's essentially Christian theology anyway, that view of man."

Kubrick said in an interview with Gene Siskel:

Stanley Kubrick was born Jewish, but never much practiced this religion, as his parents were not very religious either. When asked by Michel Ciment in an interview if he had a religious upbringing, Kubrick replied: "No, not at all."http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html

Kubrick is often said to have been an atheist, but this may not be quite true. In Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Jack Nicholson recalls that Kubrick said The Shining is an overall optimistic story because "anything that says there's anything after death is ultimately an optimistic story."

In Kubrick's interview with Craig McGregor, he said:

When asked by Eric Nordern in Kubrick's interview with Playboy if 2001: A Space Odyssey was a religious film, Kubrick elaborated:

In the same interview, he also blames the poor critical reaction to 2001 as follows:

In an interview with William Kloman of The New York Times, when asked why there is hardly any dialogue in 2001, Kubrick explained:

Stephen King recalled Kubrick calling him late at night while he was filming The Shining and Kubrick asked him, "Do you believe in God?" King said that he had answered, "Yes," but has had three different versions of what happened next. One time, he said that Kubrick simply hung up on him. On other occasions, he claimed Kubrick said, "I knew it," and then hung up on him. On yet another occasion, King claimed that Kubrick said, before hanging up, "No, I don't think there is a God." In more recent interviews, King has had yet another version of the "God" story, in which Kubrick calls King and asks him if he thinks ghost stories are optimistic because they all suggest there is life after death. King replies, "What about hell?" There is a pause and Kubrick says, "I do not believe in hell." Stephen King said that the primary reason why he didn't like Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining was as follows:

:"I think there are two basic problems with the movie. First, Kubrick is a very cold man—pragmatic and rational—and he had great difficulty conceiving even academically, of a supernatural world … 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. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others."

Curiously and ironically, King's choice for directing the 1997 miniseries version of The Shining was Mick Garris, who, according to the interview with his wife found on the DVD of the Masters of Horror series episode of "Chocolate", was a "confirmed atheist", who does not believe in the supernatural at all, while Kubrick was actually more open to the possibility. Also, King said that he believed H. P. Lovecraft was the greatest master of the classic horror tale (something he shared in common with Kubrick), but Lovecraft famously scoffed at the notion of a literal belief in the supernatural and was a very rational and pragmatic man himself.

Finally, Katharina Kubrick Hobbs was asked by alt.movies.kubrick if Stanley Kubrick believed in God. Here is her response: :"Hmm, tricky. I think he believed in something, if you understand my meaning. He was a bit of a fatalist actually, but he was also very superstitious. Truly a mixture of nature and nurture. I don't know exactly what he believed, he probably would have said that no-one can really ever know for sure, and that it would be rather arrogant to assume that one could know. I asked him once after The Shining, if he believed in ghosts. He said that it would be nice if there "were" ghosts, as that would imply that there is something after death. In fact, I think he said, "Gee I hope so."...He did not have a religious funeral service. He's not buried in consecrated ground. We always celebrated Christmas and had huge Christmas trees." http://groups.google.com/group/alt.movies.kubrick/msg/93d412d7e01b9d0d

There has been a longstanding debate regarding the DVD releases of Kubrick's films; specifically, the aspect ratio of many of the films. The primary point of contention relates to his final five films, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. All five films were projected theatrically with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The DVD for A Clockwork Orange has an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 as does Barry Lyndon; the remaining three films are 1.33:1 ("fullscreen").

Kubrick was very upset about television screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because the film was shot for Cinerama, it was one of the few times Kubrick used a widescreen ratio (originally 2.2:1 [70mm], modified to 2.35:1 [35mm]); for television, the distributor created a pan-and-scan transfer at 1.33:1, compromising many of the images Kubrick had meticulously created. Following this, he decided to shoot all of his films open-matte (the full 1.33:1 frame is exposed on the actual film, but, when projected, this image is matted to 1.85:1). Kubrick never approved a 1.85:1 video transfer of any of his films; when he died in 1999, DVD was only beginning to catch on strongly in the U.S., and most people were still used to seeing movies fill their television screen. Warner Home Video chose to release these films with the transfers which Kubrick had explicitly approved. Subsequent to that, some evidence has been brought out which suggests that Kubrick (along with his directors of photography) did, in fact, compose shots for 1.85:1 (though the evidence is strongest for The Shining, people extrapolate and apply it to all of them). The most recent special edition versions (released on October 23, 2007) of The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut are in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and A Clockwork Orange has a new, digitally remastered anamorphic transfer with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The previous HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of Full Metal Jacket are presented in 1.78:1.

There is a secondary concern related to aspect ratio. During the days of laserdisc, The Criterion Collection released six Kubrick films. Spartacus and 2001 were both widescreen (2.35:1 and 2.2:1, respectively) at the same ratio as their subsequent DVD releases, and The Killing and Paths of Glory were both fullscreen (1.33:1), as these films were released when projectors could still show 1.33:1 (although they were also projected in 1.66:1). Dr. Strangelove and Lolita, though, were given very atypical aspect ratios, in transfers personally overseen by Kubrick. For unspecified reasons, Kubrick chose to give both films an alternating aspect ratio; at times, the image is 1.33:1, while at other times, the image is 1.66:1. This is sometimes falsely attributed to the use of stock footage in Strangelove (another, similar claim is that the transfer was done at 1.33:1, but some shots had already been "hard-matted" to 1.66:1 -- that is, shot in a 1.33:1 ratio with a matte covering a portion of the lens, permanently matting the film to that ratio). The initial DVD releases of Strangelove maintained this approved transfer, but for the most recent two-disc special edition, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment replaced it with a new, digitally remastered anamorphic transfer with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. All DVD releases of Lolita to date have been at a uniform 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and the expectation is that future releases will retain this aspect ratio.

Also of note, laserdisc releases of 2001 were in a slightly flawed aspect ratio. The film was shot for 70mm, with an approximate ratio of 2.2:1, but many theaters could only show it in 35mm, which is 2.35:1. Thus, the picture was slightly modified for the 35mm prints. The laserdisc releases maintained the 2.2:1 ratio, but applied it to a 35mm print; thus, the edges were slightly cropped, and the top and bottom of the image slightly opened up. This seems to have finally been corrected with the most recent DVD release, which was newly remastered from a 70mm print.

In debates over Kubrick's original intent, he is frequently quoted as saying that he likes/prefers height to width. However, without context, it is unclear whether he made this statement regarding 1.85:1 vs. 1.33:1 or 2.35:1 vs. 1.85:1. The latter would certainly be possible, given that many filmmakers contemporary to Kubrick used 2.35:1 as a default aspect ratio, whereas Kubrick only used it once, at the studio's insistence on Spartacus (though coming very close on 2001).

;Documentary short films * Day of the Fight (1951) * Flying Padre (1951) * The Seafarers (1953)

;Feature films

* Stanley Kubrick Archive at the London College of Communication

* 1. http://www.krusch.com/kubrick/Q13.html * 2. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0037.html * 3. * 4. Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Documentary film. Dir. Jan Harlan. Warner Home Video, 2001. 142 min. * 5. Kubrick on The Shining, An interview with Michel Ciment * 6. The Hechinger Debacle

*Nelson, Thomas Allen, "Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze", Indiana University Press, 1982. ISBN 0253213908 * 7. * 8. * 9. * 10. Lyons, V and Fitzgerald, M. (2005) ‘’Asperger syndrome : a gift or a curse?’’ New York : Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 1-59454-387-9 * 11. * 12. *13. Lobrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1997.

* * * The Authorized Stanley Kubrick Web Site by Warner Bros. * Stanley Kubrick: The Master Filmmaker * The Kubrick Site * Kubrick on Senses of Cinema (In Depth Biography) * * Multi-media Kubrick archive * The Guardian: Citizen Kubrick * Kubrick Multimedia Film Guide * List of interviews and Look photographs * List of all the published Look photographs * Stanley Kubrik Archive at the London College of Communication * Marco Cavina: I Gauss superluminosi: viaggio ai confini dell’ottica A detailed story about the 3 Zeiss Planar lenses used in Barry Lyndon (in Italian)