The Anatomy of a Filmography: Stanley Kubrick, Part 2 (1960’s)

The wonderful, colorful, cultural and musical Sixties – there was The Beatles, Woodstock and Rosa Parks. But that’s only one side of things. A president was murdered, wars raged, and Americans had a little problem that separated gray problems into black and white. Hollywood was dealing with accusations of communist loyalty among filmmakers, and the very real issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War seeped into some of the films made during that time period. For Stanley Kubrick, the Sixties saw a transition from a realist style to a more surrealist style. His four films that were shot and released during that period of cultural and social upheaval: Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey, are more ambitious in both content and scope than his previous films. All rank among his most acclaimed works, and deal with themes both relevant to the times, as well as his usual fixations. The success of his 1960 box office behemoth, Spartacus, freed up Kubrick of the typical Hollywood constraints, allowing him the financial flexibility to make his move to a rural English manor, where most of his ensuing films would take shape.

Spartacus is part historical adventure, part love story that’s told on an epic scale. The film cost $12 million to make, the equivalent of about $90 million today, eventually raking in over $60 million at the box office. Elaborate costumes and settings, not to mention the fact that it was Kubrick’s first film shot in color, and a wonderful score (the “love song” theme!) that accompanies nearly every scene make Spartacus Kubrick’s most expensive and grand film to date. Despite its success, both commercially and critically, Kubrick disowned the film, disliking the final product and upset at the fact that he didn’t have full creative control over its production.

Kubrick includes various allusions in the film to the American societal and political climate of the time. Spartacus and his army of unshackled slaves were the frustrated disenfranchised folks in America, bubbling with fury aimed at the mainstream. They were the communists (the film’s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was on the Hollywood 10), Crassus and his gang of politicians, a.k.a the stuffy establishment.

It’s a long film, nearly 180 minutes, with drawn-out dialogue scenes and dramatic battle scenes, which are often silent. Kubrick handles action and silence masterfully. When he relies too heavily on dialogue, the film wanders. The behind the scenes chess play of wartime is a trademark of many of Kubrick’s films, and these scenes generally play out via a long back and forth that runs a bit long. The film is most effective when silent. Intense stares, slave children sucking on their thumbs while their mothers stroke their hair, and lengthy shots of a character’s face convey more emotion and reveal more about character than the conversations do. His next film, 1962’s Lolita, is a far cry from this one’s grandeur, and is a return to intimacy (and black and white), and also marked a new stylistic beginning for Kubrick.

Lolita is the name of the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov by which Kubrick’s 1962 film of the same title is based. The story revolves around an elderly man, the cultured Englishman Humbert Humbert, who becomes infatuated, and ultimately obsessed with, his 14-year-old “nymphet” stepdaughter.  While the film is unexplored territory for Kubrick in terms of plot, it explores similar character flaws and themes. Lolita is essentially the slow, sad unspooling of a man driven by blind desire, and an exploration of irrational thought being rationalized by a once rational protagonist. There is no logic to passion.

The film is often funny; a black dramedy that shows Kubrick’s sense of humor was buried beneath the dour subject matter of his previous work. Charlotte (Shelley Winters), the over bearing mother of Lolita (Sue Lyon) and Humbert’s (James Mason) near insane new wife, provides much of the humor. I don’t want to spoil anything, but for reasons obvious to those who have seen the film, her bumbling soliloquys and nonsensical come-ons towards Humbert “die” about an hour in, and with it, much of the comic relief in an otherwise fairly uncomfortable film.

The Nabokov novel was released in 1955, and Kubrick’s film adaptation in 1962. This time period was the Middle Ages of sex life in America. Intimacy was a touchy subject, and the novel’s risqué taboo content forced Kubrick to leave the most lewd aspects of his film on the cutting room floor (due to the Hays Code), a fact that he said had he known he would have never made the film. Kubrick is playful with the plot structure in Lolita, and its expansion of certain characters, limiting of others, and non-linear storyline deviated from the novel, though his decisions were successful in adjusting the novel to a visual format. Pete Sellers is hilarious and deft as the multi rolled chameleon Clare Quilty, an “Oriental-minded” writer that also develops an infatuation for the irresistible Lolita. Everything about the film is in contrast to the color and jubilance of Spartacus, and Kubrick’s return in 1964 with Dr. Strangelove would build upon the more surrealist, psychological underpinnings of Lolita with a lighter, more comedic approach.

Dr. Strangelove is chiefly a satire. It riffs on Cold War paranoia, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, the various “races”- nuclear, arms, etc.- of the war and MAD (mutually assured destruction), a theory that both the attacker and defender would be destroyed in the event of a attack nuclear. Kubrick initially set out to make a serious, dramatic film about the nuclear scare, but a few weeks into writing the script he realized it would be most effective as a satire. The military posturing and very real paranoia and fear were much too serious to take seriously it seemed. And all for the better. The film is hilarious. It’s ridiculous and over the top in it’s dialogue and characters and situations. As Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden), the paranoid, cigar puffing general, argues with Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) about whether to give out a potentially fatal order to a B-52, which is the essential through line of the plot, he says: “War is too important to be left to politicians”. There is perhaps no other line of dialogue more apt to express Kubrick’s war philosophy than that, and it’s the idea that most of the film’s silliness plays on.

This is Kubrick at his most daring, lampooning a subject that altered the psyche of ordinary citizens and not so ordinary politicians at the time of Dr. Strangelove’s release. The film pokes fun at nearly every element of the Cold War. Two nuclear missiles that sit at the ready on a B-52 have “Hi There!” and “Dear John” scribbled on them. The scenes on the B-52 involve a hillbilly captain and his bashful good ole American boys readying for an attack. Countless switches are thrown, a survival kit consisting of chewing gum and “prophylactics” are handed out, and war jargon is tossed around rapid-fire by the crewmembers.

Kubrick knows war is a serious thing, he’s tackled war’s more grave aspects before and will after, but he also knows it’s too touchy a subject to not play with. Every flip of a switch or bark of an order is over the top and humorous. There’s a scene in which President Muffley (Peter Sellers in his second of three roles) telephones the Soviet premier Dimitri in The War Room. It’s a cordial conversation in the midst of an immediate American attack, where pleasantries are exchanged and then some, and it’s an example of the extremes Kubrick takes most of the material to in this film. Four years after Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick would return to the epic genre for his final 60’s film, this time with a sci-fi twist.

It’s hard to believe 2001: A Space Odyssey was made in 1968. It’s light-years ahead of its time, in more ways than one. The film is a collage of elaborate visuals, music and ideas. Kubrick uses the film to share his vision of the future. He explores man’s growing relationship with technology, the future of space exploration (the film was made during the height of the space race), and more. He also takes a peek back millions of years ago to when mankind were simple ape-like savages that killed with animal bones and communicated by jumping and grunting and beating their hairy chests. A far cry from the modern mankind that explores the final frontier with gusto and intelligence, a neohuman machine zapped of emotion and well, humanness.

2001 is a story about evolution, and what Kubrick foresees as being the future of mankind. Are humans evolving or devolving? Is our increasingly dependent relationship with machines beneficial? Are we our selves more machine than the machines? These are all themes that Kubrick tackles in the film, perhaps his most heady and abstract effort as a filmmaker.

2001 hardly has any recognizable narrative elements: there is no protagonist to latch onto, no coherent storyline to guide us, and no discernible ending. As a result, the film drags at times, and it’s an exercise in patience for both the director and his audience. Yet it still manages to move. The score is magical. Satellites float in the empty, vast blackness of space to the tune of Johann Strauss II’s waltz The Blue Danube. It’s like a beautiful space ballet. The film certainly has its creepy moments, and Kubrick uses music and sound effects masterfully to heighten the fear. Whenever the mysterious black monolith appears on screen (so as not to spoil anything, I won’t mention exactly what this is), an unnerving and amplified gothic moaning clip is played. It’s nothing less than hair-raising. Kubrick’s mastery with the technical aspect of filmmaking makes up for the film’s lack of a conventional narrative. Left to pretty much any other director, this material would have been difficult to translate onto screen effectively, much less be in the discussion of the finest films of all time.

In the late 1960’s, at around the time of 2001’s release, the sci-fi genre was stale, badly in need of a fresh take. Kubrick either breathed the freshest of air on the genre, or he finally nailed its coffin shut, depending on whom you talk to. What is undeniable, however, is the film’s achievements in special effects and music and scope, at least in terms of a film set beyond the confines of Earth. Kubrick’s rise in the 60's went from ancient Rome to conservative America to the Cold War and finally, to space. It’s fitting that his atmospheric rise that took place during that decade ended with a spectacle set entirely beyond the ozone layer. Check back soon to see where Kubrick’s films went from here. Could he get any higher?