2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Kubrick spent five years developing his next film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The film was adapted from the short story The Sentinel, by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, and the screenplay was written by Kubrick and Clarke in collaboration. The film's theme, the birthing of one intelligence by another, is developed in two parallel intersecting stories on two very different times scales. One depicts transitions between various stages of man, from ape to "star child", as man is reborn into a new existence, each step shepherded by an enigmatic alien intelligence seen only in its artifacts: a series of seemingly indestructible eons-old black monoliths. It also depicts human interaction with our own more directly created and controlled offspring intelligence. The film was conceived as a Cinerama spectacle and was photographed in Super Panavision 70.

Upon its release in 1968, the film appeared to defy genre convention, sometimes considered unlike any science-fiction movie before it, and clearly different from any of Kubrick's earlier films or stories.[54] It contained ground-breaking special effects designed by Kubrick to give the viewer a "dazzling mix of imagination and science", and winning Kubrick his only personal Oscar, an Academy Award for Visual Effects.

Kubrick was very much interested in science and the possibilities that life existed beyond Earth. When Kubrick first contacted Clarke through his friend about helping him write the film, he assumed Clarke was a "recluse", then living in Ceylon. They first met in person in New York, although Kubrick did not offer Clarke the job of writing at that point, nor was the possible film discussed. LoBrutto notes that Clarke was impressed with Kubrick's intelligence.

Subsequently, after they agreed to the story, Kubrick worked closely with Clarke for three months to produce a 130-page treatment for the film, and consulted with other experts and agencies while doing so. Initially, Clarke worked in Kubrick's apartment office on Central Park West with an electric typewriter.

Kubrick describes the movie as "a nonverbal experience", but would not elaborate on the film's meaning during a Playboy magazine interview in 1968, saying that he "tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeon-holing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content ... just as music does ... You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning.

In contrast within a film infused with allegory and symbolism, the film was also noted for its groundbreaking scientific realism in depicting space flight, for example in its depiction of various strategies to deal with zero-gravity, the absence of sound in outer space, artificial intelligence, and the fact that interplanetary space travel will require different kinds of vehicles engineered for different stages of the journey.

2001 was the first of several Kubrick films in which classical music played an important role. At the suggestion of Jan Harlan, Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss was included,used for the opening credits, in the "The Dawn of Man" sequence and again in the ending scene which astronaut David Bowman, as the "star child", gazes at Earth. Kubrick also used music by avant-garde Hungarian composer György Ligeti, his work's first wide commercial exposure, along with Johann Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz.

The film was not an immediate hit among many critics, who faulted its lack of dialogue, slow pacing, and seemingly impenetrable storyline. Others, like Penelope Gilliatt, called it "a great film", and numerous directors were inspired by it. It has been considered amongst the greatest science fiction films ever made, as well as one of the most influential. After it was shown at a private screening at the Vatican, producer Jan Harlan recalls that a cardinal stood up and said to the audience, "Here is a film made by an agnostic who hit the bullseye."

Today, many film critics and moviemakers regard it as the most significant Hollywood film of its generation, with some, such as Spielberg, calling it his generation's "big bang". Lockwood considers 2001 a "life-changer" in terms of technology and the possibilities of film, realizing it would be even during the filming: "When you've got the best moviemaker of all time, Stanley Kubrick, with one of the best sci-fi writers of all time, Arthur C. Clarke, combining, well, I kinda knew." It is a staple on All Time Top 10 lists.

Napoleon, unrealized film

Following 2001 (1968), Kubrick planned to make a film about the life of the French emperor Napoleon. He had already spent two years doing extensive research about Napoleon's life, and would use a screenplay he wrote in 1961. The film was well into pre-production and ready to begin filming in 1969 when MGM cancelled the project, partly due to its projected cost, and the poor reception the Soviet version received.

Screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin, one of Kubrick's young assistants on 2001, helped research the life of Napoleon for Kubrick. He was sent to the Isle of Elba, Austerlitz and Waterloo, taking thousands of pictures which he later went over with Kubrick. Kubrick also had him read scholarly monographs about Napoleon as well as Napoleon's personal memoirs and commentaries.

In 2011, Taschen published the book, Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, a large volume compilation of literature and source documents from Kubrick, such as scene photo ideas and copies of letters Kubrick wrote and received. Kubrick had already approached numerous stars to play leading roles, including Audrey Hepburn for Empress Josephine, a part which she could not accept.

In March 2013, Spielberg, who had collaborated previously with Kubrick on A.I. Artificial Intelligence and was a passionate fan of his work, announced that he would be developing Napoleon as a TV miniseries based on Kubrick's original screenplay.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

When financing for Napoleon fell through, Kubrick searched for a project that he could film quickly on a small budget. He settled on A Clockwork Orange (1971). His adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel of the same name is an exploration of violence and experimental rehabilitation by law enforcement authorities. LoBrutto describes the film as a "sociopolitical statement about the government's threat against personal freedom", and Ciment explains that, through the story, Kubrick "is denouncing brainwashing of every kind and making a plea for free-will". Kubrick did not deny those conclusions, asserting that even with good motives there were limits to how society should maintain "law and order": "The State sees the spectre looming ahead of terrorism and anarchy, and this increases the risk of its over-reaction and a reduction in our freedom."

Because of its depiction of teenage violence, the film became one of the most controversial films of the decade, and part of an ongoing debate about violence in cinema. Detractors claimed the film glorified violence. Kubrick personally pulled the film from release in the United Kingdom after receiving death threats following a series of copycat crimes based on the film; it was thus completely unavailable legally in the UK until after Kubrick's death, and not re-released until 2000. Kubrick disagreed that a film could transform a person into a criminal, and argued that "violent crime is invariably committed by people with a long record of anti-social behavior".

Kubrick defended the depiction of violence in the film, arguing that "The violence in the story has to be given sufficient dramatic weight so that the moral dilemma it poses can be seen in the right context", otherwise the viewer would not reach a "meaningful conclusion about relative rights and wrongs". The State cannot turn even the most "vicious criminals into vegetables".

Kubrick also expanded his ideas to the nation's popular media and worried that it could have a similar effect on a wider scale. In a letter Kubrick had published by the New York Times in 1972, he warned against what he described as multimedia "fascism" that could also turn human beings into "zombies". Author Julian Rice explains that, in this larger context, Kubrick implies that "spectators" of media can become a "massive entity subject to predictable response".

A Clockwork Orange was rated 'X' for violence in the US on its original release, just a year before that rating became linked to pornography. Kubrick later released a cut version for an 'R' rating, though the original version has since been re-rated to 'R'.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Special lenses were developed for Barry Lyndon to film candlelit scenes. This is the only film with candlelight scenes in which the candles are the only actual light source on the set

Barry Lyndon (1975) was an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon (also known as Barry Lyndon), a picaresque novel about the adventures of an 18th-century Irish gambler and social climber. The cinematography and lighting techniques that Kubrick, together with his cinematographer John Alcott, used in Barry Lyndon were highly innovative. Most notably, interior scenes were shot with a specially adapted high-speed f/0.7 Zeiss camera lens originally developed for NASA to be used in satellite photography. The lenses allowed many scenes to be lit only with candlelight, creating two-dimensional, diffused-light images reminiscent of 18th-century paintings.Cinematographer Allen Daviau says that it gives the audience a way of seeing the characters and scenes as they would have been seen by people at the time.

A number of production experts have described the efforts that Kubrick took to both acquire the lenses, considered "priceless" by the head of Panavision, and adapt them for use on his camera. He had to have the camera engineered and rebuilt, which made it dedicated for that one lens only. Ed Di Giulio, who rebuilt the camera for Kubrick, says that it is two f-stops faster than even the fastest lenses currently available.

Scene showing posed and classical painting style of photography

Barry Lyndon found a great audience in Europe, particularly in France. Its measured pace and length at three hours put off many American critics and audiences, but the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, more than any other Kubrick film. As with most of Kubrick's films, Barry Lyndon's reputation has grown through the years, particularly among filmmakers. The director Martin Scorsese has cited it as his favorite Kubrick film. Spielberg has praised its "impeccable technique", although he had panned it when much younger.Like its two predecessors, the film does not have an original score. Irish traditional songs (performed by The Chieftains) are combined with classical works from the period.

According to some critics who recognized the technical skills and special lenses used for the film, "every scene could have been a painting". Writer George Lewis points out that, for many of the scenes, Kubrick posed the actors for an instant before the action, thereby emphasizing this painterly quality. He adds, "The scenes look like European paintings of the 1700s and 1800s", and such paintings are considered art in the American popular mind. The effect was accentuated, notes Ciment, by Kubrick's use of "slow reverse zoom which, moving out from a single character, enlarges the field of vision until its powerful scrutiny takes possession of the whole decor".Kubrick told Ciment, "I created a picture file of thousands of drawings and paintings for every type of reference that we could have wanted. I think I destroyed every art book you could buy in a bookshop."

The Shining (1980)

The Shining, released in 1980, was adapted from the novel of the same name by bestselling horror writer Stephen King. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a writer who takes a job as a winter caretaker of a large and isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains. He spends the winter there with his wife, played by Shelley Duvall, and their young son, who displays paranormal abilities. During their stay, they confront both Jack's descent into madness and apparent supernatural horrors lurking in the hotel.

Kubrick, who gave his actors freedom to extend the script, and even improvise on occasion, did so with the film's two main stars. Nicholson notes that actors were given new script pages or revisions on almost a daily basis. According to LoBrutto, Kubrick made it clear that the printed script was to be used as a guide. On the set, Nicholson always appeared in character, and if Kubrick felt confident, after they considered how a scene could be shot, that he knew his lines well enough, he might encourage him, as he did Peter Sellers, to improvise. As a result, Nicholson's 'Here's Johnny!' line was improvised.

Vivian Kubrick's film, The Making of The Shining, shows Nicholson and Duvall rehearsing the scene and revising the script along with Kubrick. Kubrick allowed his daughter Vivian to film the documentary, an unusual move as he kept access to the set closed to all others.

Kubrick made extensive use of the newly invented Steadicam, a weight-balanced camera support, which allowed for smooth hand-held camera movement in scenes where a conventional camera track was impractical. According to Garrett Brown, Steadicam's inventor, it was the first picture to utilize its full potential. Kubrick's perfectionist style required dozens of takes of certain scenes.Nicholson's scene with the ghostly bartender was shot thirty-six times, for example.

As with most Kubrick films, subsequent critical reaction has treated the film favorably. Among horror movie fans, The Shining is a cult classic. The film's financial success renewed Warner Brothers' faith in Kubrick's ability to make profitable films after the commercial failure in the US of Barry Lyndon.

While Kubrick admitted he had always been interested in the subject of ESP and paranormal experiences, he first became interested in doing the film only after he read King's novel.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Seven years later, Kubrick made his next film, Full Metal Jacket (1987), an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel The Short-Timers.

It was filmed in a derelict gasworks in the London Docklands area that was adapted as a ruined-city set, which makes the film visually very different from other Vietnam War films. Instead of a tropical jungle, the second half of the picture depicts urban warfare. Reviewers and commentators thought this contributed to the bleakness and seriousness of the film.

According to Ciment, the film contained some of Kubrick's trademark characteristics, such as his selection of ironic music, portrayals of men being dehumanized, and attention to extreme detail to achieve realism. At the beginning of the film, as new and expressionless recruits have their hair cut down to their scalp, the song "Goodbye Sweetheart, Hello Vietnam" is playing in the background; in a later scene where United States Marines patrol the ruins of an abandoned and totally destroyed city, the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club is heard as a sardonic counterpoint.

The film is split into halves. The recruits in boot camp are also subjected to what Ciment calls "a form of lobotomy, a barrage of physical and verbal aggression". Ciment writes, "In the transition from man to weapon, Kubrick underlines the process of dehumanization ... the same contradiction between the mechanical and the living that is manifest in A Clockwork Orange."According to one review, notes co-star Matthew Modine, "The first half of FMJ is brilliant. Then the film degenerates into a masterpiece."

Ciment also recognizes aspects of this war film with Paths of Glory, which Kubrick directed thirty years earlier. There are similarities in both films, such as the use of natural lighting, an off-screen narrator, attention to detail, a sense of chaos, and the exploration of panoramic spaces. As a result, both films "accentuate the impression of reality ... and photographic hyper-realism".

Kubrick explained he made the film look realistic by using natural light, and achieved a "newsreel effect" by making the Steadicam shots less steady.[3]:246

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Kubrick's final film was Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a wealthy Manhattan couple on a sexual odyssey. The story is based on Arthur Schnitzler's Freudian novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story in English), which Kubrick relocated from turn-of-the-century Vienna to New York City in the 1990s. The film's theme has been described by Nicholson as delving into questions of the "dangers of married life", and the "silent desperations of keeping an ongoing relationship alive".

Screenwriter Michael Herr notes that although the film outwardly presents "sex and thrills" as its subject, its ending conveys a message valuing "marriage and fidelity". The "core theme" of the film, writes Webster, is that of "monogamous fidelity".

The secret password that Cruise needed in the film was "Fidelio". Historian Stuart McDougall adds that Fidelio is, "ironically", the title of Beethoven's only opera, and which is subtitled, "Married Love"."One could argue Kubrick strengthened this idea via his choice of password in the film", adds Webster, as the original password by Schnitzler was "Denmark". According to Herr, "Fidelio" is the password and the presiding spirit of the piece.

The title of the film also gives a clue to that theme. Webster sees an antecedent to the title phrase, "eyes wide shut", in a quotation by Benjamin Franklin on marriage: "keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards."Critic Charles Whitehouse agrees, stating, "My guess is that the phrase "Eyes Wide Shut" is shorthand for the most successful attitude a monogamous couple can adopt to viewing each other's inner life."

Kubrick's wife noted his long-standing interest in the project, saying, "over the years he would see friends getting divorced and remarried, and the topic would come up". She knew that this was a subject he wanted to make into a film. Kidman observed that "Stanley's expectations of people were not really high".

Although Kubrick was almost seventy, he worked relentlessly for 15 months in order to get the film out by its planned release date of July 16, 1999. He worked 18 hours a day, all the while maintaining complete confidentiality about the film. Press releases were sent to the media, stating briefly that "Stanley Kubrick's next film will be Eyes Wide Shut, a story of jealousy and sexual obsession".Eyes Wide Shut, like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange before it, faced censorship before release. Kubrick sent an unfinished preview copy to the stars and producers a few months before release, but his sudden death on March 7, 1999 came a few days after he finished editing. He never saw the final version released to the public.

Film critic Michel Ciment believes that "he literally worked himself to death", trying to complete the film to his liking. Ciment explains that Kubrick's desire to keep this, and many of his earlier films, private and unpublicized during its production, was an expression of Kubrick's "will to power", and not a penchant for secrecy: "Kubrick felt, quite rightly, that the public generally knows far too much about a film before it opens and that the surrounding media frenzy made the joy of surprise and pleasure of discovery impossible".

Speaking about the film, Kidman notes that, despite some critics describing the film's theme as "dark", in essence "it is a very hopeful film". During an interview in the documentary, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, she says that Kubrick was indirectly stressing the moral values of "commitment and loyalty", adding that "ultimately, Eyes Wide Shut is about that commitment".Although there were rumors at the time that making the film may have negatively impacted her marriage to Cruise, and they both recognized that "Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality ... obviously it wasn't us", and she does not believe it affected their relationship.She also felt that acting under Kubrick's direction "was like having a great, great teacher."

Sydney Pollack, who acted in the film, adds that "the heart of [the film] was illustrating a truth about relationships and sexuality. But it was not illustrated in a literal way, but in a theatrical way."[84] Ciment agrees with Kidman, and notes the positive meaning underlying the film, pointing out how some of it is voiced through the dialog, and suggests that the words "resonate like an epitaph" to Kubrick: "Maybe, I think, we should be grateful ... grateful that we've managed to survive through all of our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream".

Work on A. I. Artificial Intelligence

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Kubrick collaborated with Brian Aldiss on an expansion of his short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" into a three-act film. It was a futuristic fairy-tale about a robot that resembles and behaves as a child, and his efforts to become a 'real boy' in a manner similar to Pinocchio. 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 1999, following Kubrick's death, Spielberg took the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers and composed a new screenplay based on an earlier 90-page story treatment by Ian Watson written under Kubrick's supervision and according to Kubrick's specifications. In association with what remained of Kubrick's production unit, he directed the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence which was produced by Kubrick's longtime producer (and brother-in-law) Jan Harlan. Sets, costumes and art direction were based on work by conceptual artist, Chris Baker, who had also done much of his work under Kubrick's supervision.

Although Spielberg was able to function autonomously in Kubrick's absence, he said he felt "inhibited to honor him," and followed Kubrick's visual schema with as much fidelity as he could, writes author Joseph McBride. Spielberg, who once referred to Kubrick as "the greatest master I ever served," now with production underway, admitted, "I felt like I was being coached by a ghost".

The film was released in June 2001. It contains a posthumous production credit for Stanley Kubrick at the beginning and the brief dedication "For Stanley Kubrick" at the end. John Williams' score contains many allusions to pieces heard in other Kubrick films.

Unrealized projects

Kubrick both developed and was offered several film ideas which never saw completion. The most notable of these were an epic biopic of Napoleon and a Holocaust-themed film entitled Aryan Papers. Kubrick had done much research on Napoleon and it was well into pre-production, when the studio suddenly pulled the plug after another big-budget biopic about Napoleon entitled Waterloo failed financially. Work on Aryan Papers depressed Kubrick enormously, and he eventually decided that Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List covered much of the same material.

Tony Frewin, an assistant who worked with the director for a long period of time, revealed in a March 2013 Atlantic article: "He [Kubrick] was limitlessly interested in anything to do with Nazis and desperately wanted to make a film on the subject." The article then elaborates upon Frewin's statement and discusses another World War II film that was never realized—a film based on the life story of Dietrich Schulz-Koehn, a Nazi officer who used the pen name "Dr. Jazz" to write reviews of German music scenes during the Nazi era. Kubrick had been given a copy of the Mike Zwerin book Swing Under the Nazis after he had finished production on Full Metal Jacket, the front cover of which featured a photograph of Schulz-Koehn. A screenplay was never completed and Kubrick's film adaptation plan was never initiated (the unfinished Aryan Papers was a factor in the abandonment of the project).

Kubrick was also unable to direct a film of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum as Eco had given his publisher instructions to never sell the film rights to any of his books after his dissatisfaction with the film version of The Name of the Rose. Eco was unaware of Kubrick's interest and later said he would have relented had he known of it.

When the film rights to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings were sold to United Artists, the Beatles approached Kubrick to direct them in a film based on the books, but Kubrick told John Lennon he felt the story was unfilmable. Director Peter Jackson has reported that Tolkien was against the involvement of the Beatles.

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