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(gelmis, 1970:38) Although Stanley Kubrick Was Not Alone In His Desire To ...

(Gelmis, 1970:38)
Although Stanley Kubrick was not alone in his desire to spend as much time on the postproduction process as on the process of directing his actors, there is a unique atmosphere to his films that renders attempts at defining his work almost obsolete. This is because Kubrick was very much an obsessive director one who lived, breathed and talked about the film in an obsessive way for the weeks, months and even years during which it was getting made. He therefore left his indelible personal stamp on each film that he ever made, regardless of its heritage or genre.
It can be seen that obsessive attention to detail and extreme stylisation are the two key building blocks upon which Kubrick has constructed his greatest films. Moreover, these two character traits became increasingly evident as his career progressed, hinting that the importance which he scribed to them was in fact on the increase as he grew more accomplished. This is an important point and one that should be seen as one of the chief reasons behind both Kubrick's directorial success and longevity. While many other film-makers might have chosen to rest on their laurels and to take on discernibly ‘easier' films to work with later on in their careers, Kubrick employed the opposite philosophy, knowing that no director can ever completely master his trade; that there is always a new creative element available somewhere that has yet to be experimented with. Thus, while terms such as ‘maverick' and ‘genius' does not appear out of place for a description of Stanley Kubrick as a film-maker, they do not tell the whole tale. It seems more appropriate in this case to concur with the observations of Albert Einstein who noted that creative genius was one per cent innate talent and ninety-nine per cent application. This is how Kubrick was able to remain an auteur whilst still offering his audience a diverse, challenging set of films to digest.
One more generic point about Kubrick the movie maker must be asserted before turning attention towards a critical appraisal of his work on a film-by-film basis. One of the most noticeable connections within his diverse range of films concerns the genesis of the production itself. If his films appear to be extremely well thought out stories with well defined characterisation, it is because the vast majority were formerly examples of literary fiction.
Nearly all of Kubrick's films began as adaptations of novels. Their subject matter and quality have differed enormously. (Kagan, 1993:7)
Choosing to make films that have their basis in literature is a common move in Hollywood yet it is rarely a successful venture. Not only are films inevitably compared to the books from which they drew direct inspiration, they cannot possibly contain the element of surprise that a move which has come directly from a script can attain.


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