Kubrick, Stanley

Kubrick, Stanley (1928-1999), American film director. Born in the Bronx, New York, Kubrick joined the staff of the magazine Look as a photographer in the late 1940s. By the time he was 21 he had progressed from making still photographs to making films. He bought a newsreel camera and with the help of a friend shot The Day of the Fight (1951), a 15-minute documentary bought by RKO Pathé News. The company then backed Kubrick to make the one-reel documentary Flying Padre (1951).

With borrowed finances, he made his first feature-length film, Fear and Desire, in 1953, writing, directing, shooting, and editing the film himself. It was a commercial failure, although it received some critical acclaim. His next two films, Killer’s Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956), were similarly received but brought an association with United Artists. Kubrick’s anti-war film, Paths of Glory (1957), starring Kirk Douglas, won the Grand Prix de la Critique in Brussels, Belgium, in 1959. These early films were made on small budgets and were noted for their documentary-style realism and vivid and violent detail. In 1960 Kubrick’s epic $12 million star-studded Spartacus scored a dramatic success. It was followed by Lolita (1962), based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov; Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a landmark science-fiction film; the futuristic and violent A Clockwork Orange (1971), from the novel by Anthony Burgess; Barry Lyndon (1975); The Shining (1980), from the Stephen King novel; and Full Metal Jacket (1987), concerning military men in the Vietnam War era. Well known for the lengthy periods he required for each project, the gap between films seemed to lengthen. Kubrick was renowned for his perfectionism and desire to control every aspect of his films—he wrote and produced most of the films he directed, often with co-writers, as well as exerting strong influence over the editing and cinematography—and he was rumoured to visit cinemas anonymously to check that the cinema's projection and sound quality of his films met his high standards. In 1996 Kubrick began filming Eyes Wide Shut, using a screenplay written in collaboration with novelist Frederic Raphael, starring married Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as married psychiatrists engaged in affairs with their patients. Everyone involved in the film was contractually forbidden to speak to the media. The film was eventually finished to Kubrick’s satisfaction and he was perfecting the trailers when he died unexpectedly on March 7, 1999. Kubrick suffered a sudden heart attack at his home in Hertfordshire, England, where he had lived for many years.