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How Does The Film-maker Stanley Kubrick Remain An Auteur Whilst Making A ...

How does the film-maker Stanley Kubrick remain an auteur whilst making a diverse range of different genre films?
CONTENTS
Introduction
Kubrick as Film-maker: Key Character Traits
Kubrick's Films: A Chronology
Conclusion
Bibliography

Introduction
Stanley Kubrick stands out as one of the very few world-class film directors working in Western Europe and North America during the second half of the twentieth century. Kubrick is held in such high critical esteem that he is often bracketed with seminal contemporary film-makers such as Martin Scorsese and Brian de Palma great directors who have been able to marry the core elements of a commercially successful film without losing any of the creative edge that appeals to those members of the cinema going audience who tend not to be enticed by the so-called Hollywood blockbusters. This is the formula that eludes countless film-makers in the modern era where the basic rules of profit and loss (as well as supply and demand) dictate that cinematic greatness must come with the ability to turn promising critical reviews into proved success at the box office. There can be little doubt that Stanley Kubrick was highly successful in managing to achieve such a delicate balancing act where so many others have failed or struggled to cope with the financial pressure. As such, he is a logical choice for analysis with the broader subject of how his films manage to form a complete filmography (as opposed to an incoherent, loosely connected group of films that simply happened to have been directed by the same man.)
As with Scorsese and de Palma, Kubrick's personal life has attracted almost as much attention as his films as film enthusiasts search to try and find the catalyst behind the director's critical success. In fact, Kubrick's private life has been subject to more scrutiny than any other contemporary film-maker with the possible exception of Roman Polanski whose life away from cinema was similarly engrossing. Indeed, the comparison with Polanski is apt: both men found themselves ‘working in exile'; away from the United States in Europe where both felt that they could be more expressive with regards to the kind of cinema that they wished to make. However, while logic dictates that much of the discussion must re-visit Kubrick's life and times, mention must be made of the limitations of delving into a film-maker's private life in order to attempt to unearth a deeper, more meaningful pattern to the movie making process of any auteur. This is especially true concerning Stanley Kubrick where a legend and myth has been built up around the factual history of one man's life.
It is the stated aim of the following study to sift through the rhetoric that surrounds such an infamously reclusive character as Kubrick in order to present a much more accurate vision of the films that he left as his enduring creative legacy.


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