Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick

26 July 1928 – 7 March 1999

An American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, and editor who worked predominantly in the United Kingdom. 

Kubrick started out as a photographer in New York City. Kubrick taught himself all aspects of film production and directing with time. He was a part of the New Hollywood film-making wave. His screen adaptations of novels or short stories are noted for their "dazzling" and unique cinematography, attention to detail in the service of realism, and the evocative use of music. Kubrick was also noted for being a demanding perfectionist, using painstaking care with scene staging, camera-work and coordinating extremely closely both with his actors and his off-screen collaborators. 

As director, producer, writer

• Day of the Fight (1951)
• Flying Padre (1951)
• Fear and Desire (1953)
• The Seafarers (1953)
• Killer's Kiss (1955)
• The Killing (1956)
• Paths of Glory (1957)
• Spartacus (1960)
• Lolita (1962)
• Dr. Strangelove (1964)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• A Clockwork Orange (1971)
• Barry Lyndon (1975)
• The Shining (1980)
• Full Metal Jacket (1987)
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Quotations

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A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

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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.

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You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.

* * *

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

* * *

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

* * *

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

* * *

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

* * *

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

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If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

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It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else.

* * *

Any time you take a chance you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk because they can put you away just as fast for a ten dollar heist as they can for a million dollar job.

* * *

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

* * *

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

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