Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrickwas an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. Part of the New Hollywood film-making wave, Kubrick's films are considered by film historian Michel Ciment to be "among the most important contributions to world cinema in the twentieth century", and he is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinematic history. His films, which are typically adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres, and are noted for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth26 July 1928
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films.
The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
Sanitised violence in movies has been accepted for years. What seems to upset everybody now is the showing of the consequences of violence.
The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.
The feel of the experience is the important thing, not the ability to verbalize or analyze it.
Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie
From the very beginning, all of my films have divided the critics. Some have thought them wonderful, and others have found very little good to say. But subsequent critical opinion has always resulted in a very remarkable shift to the favorable. In one instance, the same critic who originally rapped the film has several years later put it on an all-time best list. But of course, the lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.
Don't get obsessed with not liking a movie.
When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination.
How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.