From the Kubrick Archives
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Ranging from cold-blooded film noir to apocalyptic satire, the Stanley Kubrick films in our collection highlight the master in his first decade as a director, a period that showcased the thematic versatility and technical mastery that would come to define his oeuvre. On what would have been his eighty-eighth birthday, we’re celebrating the iconic filmmaker with a selection of essays, photos, and videos from our releases.
- First, read Haden Guest on Kubrick’s third feature film, The Killing, which the director made when he was only twenty-eight years old. This taut 1956 noir was “remarkable for boldly announcing so many of the stylistic and thematic preoccupations that would become important constants of his cinema.”
- Also, Chuck Stephens celebrates The Killing’s stellar cast, which assembles “Hollywood’s brightest galaxies of second- and third-rung heroes” into “a finely calibrated machine of mirth and menace.”
- Read James Naremore on the gripping 1957 antiwar drama Paths of Glory,a film “strongly marked by what came to be known as Kubrick’s style and favored themes: a mesmerizing deployment of wide-angle tracking shots and long takes, an ability to make a realistic world seem strange, an interest in the grotesque, and a fascination with the underlying irrationality of supposedly rational planning.”
- Below, peruse a gallery of photos that capture Kubrick at work on the set of Paths of Glory:
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- Next, enjoy Terry Southern’s “Notes From the War Room,” a detailed personal account of his experience working with Kubrick on the pitch-black 1964 satirical masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
- Finally, art director Eric Skillman offers a peek inside the process of designing our Dr. Strangelove release. Watch the packaging come to life in the below video:
