17-year old Stanley Kubrick photographing New York

The Shining wasn't really intended as a "Horror Film" it was a "Psychological Thriller".

If you haven't seen this breakdown of the film, I'd heavily suggest it.

http://www.curtislibrary.com/2016/0...d-set-design-in-stanley-kubricks-the-shining/

peterm1 said:
I actually kind of have mixed feelings about Kubrik as a Director. I recognize his genius but he perhaps made some movies that were not quite my style. Nevertheless, some of his films were just fabulous (Barry Lyndon comes to mind, as does his early anti war movie Paths of Glory ) but others, for all the hype about them, are only so so or at least have not stood the test of time so well IMHO. And The Shining stands out for me as being just about the world's most unscary, un-frightening horror movie of all time and so has to be one of his misses as I score it. (But perhaps the fault lies more with Steven King as author - it's hard to polish a "you know what".) What Kubrik really must be lauded for at least though, I think, is his willingness to try just about any genre. And I certainly do not knock him for that, nor for his willingness to go to the "nth degree" to recreate detail and period feel. My love of Barry Lyndon is mostly about that - even for example making period accurate military uniforms (hundreds and hundreds of them) using authentic patterns and period accurate color dyes to get the right color. Name another Director who goes to such lengths.

His early photography was excellent and especially in this I agree, he was a kind of prodigy.
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These were shown at the Museum of the City of New York late last year in a major show they put on called "Through a Different Lens".

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/stanley-kubrick-museum-of-the-city-of-new-york-photos-1202741533/

It was lovely seeing the (obviously modern) prints, some about three feet high/ wide. Most were shot while he was a staff photographer for Look magazine, which he joined at age 17. The stories that he and Look pursued, and his work on them, are fascinating.

There is a book that accompanied the show:

https://shop.mcny.org/collections/b...-a-different-lens-stanley-kubrick-photographs
 
filmtwit said:
The Shining wasn't really intended as a "Horror Film" it was a "Psychological Thriller".

If you haven't seen this breakdown of the film, I'd heavily suggest it.

http://www.curtislibrary.com/2016/0...d-set-design-in-stanley-kubricks-the-shining/
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Nah - That's splitting hairs mate. Problem is I did not find it thrilling either. Sorry.

Watching movies, especially horror movies (or thrillers) relies on "willing suspension of disbelief" which is key to the enjoyment of those movies. But there are limits to how much disbelief I can actually suspend. And poor filmic devices like tidal waves of blood gushing down a hallway don't help much either. (And neither did Jack Nicholson leering through a door and intoning "Honey I'm Home" in his best insane voice).

In short whether its a thriller or a horror movie it just left me cold. Of course if others feel differently about this film or others in his portfolio I have no problem with that - everyone is entitled to their own view and own sense of what appeals to them and does not.
 
His still photography is so interesting. Kubrick is the only director to come close to getting Marine Corps boot camp right (Full Metal Jacket) and 2001 is a masterpiece. Thanks for the link.
 
What’s especially interesting to me about these photos is just how many of them, apart from period clothing, could have been taken yesterday. The daily existence in NYC, something I live all the time, is largely unchanged since then.
 
What camera is Kubrick holding here?

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I wonder whether I might be permitted to offer a dissenting opinion, without the objective of stepping on toes or taking away from SK's legacy as an artist. SK achieved more than any of us could hope to achieve with his art.

I think the value in these photographs is less as photographs, per se, and more as historical documents of New York City life -- valuable, to be sure; but may I venture to propose that the photographs are not in themselves anything special. If you were to swap the clothing, the buildings, all of the aesthetic markers of their era for markers of our own era, I might humbly suggest that responses to them would be much less enthusiastic. One may see the same sorts of photographs in any number of Flickr streams.
 
Those NYC images are really striking. Personally, I don't care if they are staged, they are useful as a snap of the past nonetheless. Kind of like using 1940's film as a history of how folks spoke and dressed in the first half of last century. It is idealized, yes, but also true in a way.

I run hot and cold on Kubrick as a film director. I liked The Shining quite a bit, and I don't like horror movies (or novels) as a general rule. I heard a story that he made The Shining because he was trying to show Hollywood that he could do commercial work after Barry Lyndon (with regard to which I always thought the joke was on the audience). Stephen King reportedly hated the movie rendition of his novel, which makes sense as it is really Kuberik's vision, not King's. The book is about writer's block. The movie is a haunted house story. And so it goes.

There is a saying in Hollywood that to authors, they say that film-making is a collaborative process, when what they really should say is, "Film-making is a collaborative process. Bend over."

To return the NYC pictures for a moment. Do you all have the sense that these are taken with a press camera, like a Speed Graphic? In 1948, that would have been about right. If so, it makes the pictures more accomplished as there is no motor drive to help get the perfect moment - you have to chose your instant. I'd love to see the contact sheets. I also thought, looking at all those subway commuters reading their morning papers, that nothing has changed much. It is just that today, it's cell phones. Plus ca change in the Big City.
 
“I think aesthetically recording spontaneous action, rather than carefully posing a picture, is the most valid and expressive use of photography.”

I've always thought that was the way to go. Operating on your instincts is almost always going to trump a carefully reasoned out shot, assuming that you know what you're doing . Kubrick was a phenomenally talented director, photographer and cinematographer. When you read how 2001: A Space Odyssey was made, it's clearly apparent that no one but Kubrick could have made that movie. He was a genius with a great eye.

Having said that, those shots on the link here were obviously posed, ala many of Bresson's shots! It's important to remember that even a "valid and expressive use of photography" is still a photograph. It's always going to be just what it is, an illusion, a simulacrum of what is really there.
 
airfrogusmc said:
His still photography is so interesting. Kubrick is the only director to come close to getting Marine Corps boot camp right (Full Metal Jacket) and 2001 is a masterpiece. Thanks for the link.
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Very talented still photographer, genius film maker.



Kubrick showed his genius in FMJ by being able to convince the watcher that a disused town gas works in East London (UK) was actually Vietnam. One of my favourite films.
 
LCSmith said:
I wonder whether I might be permitted to offer a dissenting opinion, without the objective of stepping on toes or taking away from SK's legacy as an artist. SK achieved more than any of us could hope to achieve with his art.

I think the value in these photographs is less as photographs, per se, and more as historical documents of New York City life -- valuable, to be sure; but may I venture to propose that the photographs are not in themselves anything special. If you were to swap the clothing, the buildings, all of the aesthetic markers of their era for markers of our own era, I might humbly suggest that responses to them would be much less enthusiastic. One may see the same sorts of photographs in any number of Flickr streams.
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I agree and disagree; yes, we can see a lot of these kinds of images in today's flickr streams. Heck, I've taken similar modern images. And it's also important to remember context. Today's world gives us access to a huge range of photographic examples. We can see the best photography at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, and we can take images just as easily. We can even 'develop' images using filters and apps in our phones.


In the 40s, photography was expensive and cumbersome, and exemplars of the craft were far fewer in number, and much less available. Kubrick was 17 in the early 40s and was producing work that stood on the shoulders of the giants of that time.
 
Archiver said:
I agree and disagree; yes, we can see a lot of these kinds of images in today's flickr streams. Heck, I've taken similar modern images. And it's also important to remember context. Today's world gives us access to a huge range of photographic examples. We can see the best photography at the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, and we can take images just as easily. We can even 'develop' images using filters and apps in our phones.


In the 40s, photography was expensive and cumbersome, and exemplars of the craft were far fewer in number, and much less available. Kubrick was 17 in the early 40s and was producing work that stood on the shoulders of the giants of that time.
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The fact that it was Kubrick and he was 17 makes the photographs special. But the photographs in and of themselves are not particularly remarkable. If I came across some old negatives and scanned them and these were the images that popped up on my screen, and I didn’t know they were Kubrick, I would file them away as 1940s photographic ephemera. As a glimpse into the young photographic mind of a would-be genius, yes, of course they are interesting; but only with a view to the entire oeuvre.

EDIT:

I should also say that Kubrick's films were proffered well before my time and I acknowledge the very real potential of my not "getting it".
 
Stanley Kubrick is my all time favorite director. Thanks for sharing this. Very interesting to watch.

By the way, “When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man...” is a quote from his movie, A Clockwork Orange.
 
LCSmith said:
I wonder whether I might be permitted to offer a dissenting opinion, without the objective of stepping on toes or taking away from SK's legacy as an artist. SK achieved more than any of us could hope to achieve with his art.

I think the value in these photographs is less as photographs, per se, and more as historical documents of New York City life -- valuable, to be sure; but may I venture to propose that the photographs are not in themselves anything special. If you were to swap the clothing, the buildings, all of the aesthetic markers of their era for markers of our own era, I might humbly suggest that responses to them would be much less enthusiastic. One may see the same sorts of photographs in any number of Flickr streams.
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It’s easy to find similar subjects photographed today - any decent photographer can take a photo of this or that in the middle of the frame - but they aren’t art for the most part, so I’d say it is hard to find the same sorts of photos on Flickr. The skill in this type of photography isn’t about documentation so much as it is in the compositions of different often superimposed graphic elements (it’s not about just content but rather form, to quote Sontag) and one doesn’t see that skill in all that many Flickr streams. His street photography isn’t as sophisticated and vital in this sense as Winogrand’s or Meyerowitz’s, but it is well above average.
 
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