Do you have a preference for any one aspect of the whole filmmaking process?
I think I enjoy editing the most. It’s the nearest thing to some reasonable environment in which to do creative work. Writing, of course, is very satisfying, but, of course, you’re not working with film. The actual shooting of a film is probably the worst circumstances you could try to imagine for creating a work of art. There is, first of all, the problem of getting up very early every morning and going to bed very late every night. Then there is the chaos, confusion, and frequently physical discomfort. It would be, I suppose, like a writer trying to write a book while working at a factory lathe in temperatures which range from ninety-five to negative ten degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to this, of course, editing is the only aspect of the cinematic art that is unique. It shares no connection with any other art form: writing, acting, photography, things that are major aspects of the cinema, are still not unique to it, but editing is.

Stanley Kubrick
July 26, 1928 — March 7, 1999

Stanley Kubrick during the filming of Killer’s Kiss in 1955.

Stanley Kubrick on the set of A Clockwork Orange.

On the set of Barry Lyndon.

“I always say Fellini inspired me. I love being in Fellini’s worlds. And Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. To revisit those certain films and go in that world is just—It’s a world that didn’t exist and now it exists. There are some people that are—I always say that they don’t like so much abstraction. They don’t like to feel lost. They like to know always, always, always what’s going on. And when they don’t feel that, they feel a little crazy. And they don’t like that. Other people—and I’m one of them—I love to go into a world, be taken into a world and get lost in there and feel-think my way and have these experiences that I know… I know that feeling, but I don’t know how to put it into words. I know that feeling and it’s magical that this cinema brought it out. This is what I love.” — David Lynch

In previous films, you have worked within the conventions of specific genres (science-fiction, thriller, war film, etc.). Were you attracted to The Shining because it gave you the opportunity to explore the laws of a new genre in your career?

Stanley Kubrick: About the only law that I think relates to the genre is that you should not try to explain, to find neat explanations for what happens, and that the object of the thing is to produce a sense of the uncanny. Freud in his essay on the uncanny wrote that the sense of the uncanny is the only emotion which is more powerfully expressed in art than in life, which I found very illuminating; it didn’t help writing the screenplay, but I think it’s an interesting insight into the genre. And I read an essay by the great master H.P. Lovecraft where he said that you should never attempt to explain what happens, as long as what happens stimulates people’s imagination, their sense of the uncanny, their sense of anxiety and fear. And as long as it doesn’t, within itself, have any obvious inner contradictions, it is just a matter of, as it were, building on the imagination (imaginary ideas, surprises, etc.), working in this area of feeling. I think also that the ingeniousness of a story like this is something which the audience ultimately enjoy; they obviously wonder as the story goes on what’s going to happen, and there’s a great satisfaction when it’s all over not having been able to have anticipated the major developments of the story, and yet at the end not to feel that you have been fooled or swindled.

“Kubrick had also intended Sellers to play Major Kong, the commander of the only bomber to get through to its Russian target. Sellers hesitated to take the role of Kong, because he was uncertain that he could master Kong’s Texas twang, but Kubrick remained adamant that he play it. Finally, Sellers accidentally injured his ankle, when he tripped while emerging from his limo, and begged off from doing Kong’s scenes. Kubrick complied, but wondered if Sellers had suffered the fall “accidentally-on-purpose,” to get out of playing a part he was not comfortable with. Kubrick was disappointed that Sellers declined to play the fourth part, since, in his view, that would have meant that almost everywhere the viewer looks, there is some version of Peter Sellers holding the fate of the world in his hands.” [x]

Stanley Kubrick on the set of Full Metal Jacket.

Sight & Sound Critics’ Poll 2012

1. Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
2. Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles)
3. Tokyo Story (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
4. The Rules of the Game (dir. Jean Renoir)
5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (dir. F.W. Murnau)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick)
7. The Searchers (dir. John Ford)
8. Man with a Movie Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Th. Dreyer)
10. 8½ (dir. Federico Fellini)

And the loser is – Citizen Kane. After 50 years at the top of the Sight & Sound poll, Orson Welles’s debut film has been convincingly ousted by Alfred Hitchcock’s 45th feature Vertigo – and by a whopping 34 votes, compared with the mere five that separated them a decade ago. So what does it mean? Given that Kane actually clocked over three times as many votes this year as it did last time, it hasn’t exactly been snubbed by the vastly larger number of voters taking part in this new poll, which has spread its net far wider than any of its six predecessors. [More…, x]

Stanley Kubrick and Tom Cruise on the set of Eyes Wide Shut.

“When Eyes Wide Shut came out a few months after Stanley Kubrick’s death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise. If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the earliest ones), you’ll see that all his films were initially misunderstood. Then, after five or ten years came the realization that 2001 or Barry Lyndon or The Shining was like nothing else before or since.” — Martin Scorsese