The classic Stanley Kubrick movie nobody wanted to make: “They just didn’t like it”
It’s easy to think of Stanley Kubrick as someone who never put a foot wrong, at least cinematically, because he made so many astounding pieces of art. The genius of 2001: A Space Odyssey was enough to canonise him as a pioneering and groundbreaking filmmaker, but he made many other iconic movies during his career, from the epic period piece Barry Lyndon to the unforgettable horrors of The Shining.
Yet, Kubrick wasn’t always the cinematic heavyweight that he is now seen as. In fact, if you told critics working in the 1950s that Kubrick would be heralded as one of the all-time greats, with exhibitions dedicated to his films touring the world and documentaries made about his artistry, they’d probably laugh in your face. The thing is, Kubrick wasn’t that great of a director when he started out, and it was only a few films into his career that he showed true potential to become an enduring cinematic figure.
This is quite reassuring, in a way – even one of the biggest names in cinema struggled to find success in the beginning. Clearly, many great artists find it difficult when they start out because these early years are a time of experimentation and figuring out what it is you want to make; it rarely comes to you (complete with the necessary skills) in an instant.
When Kubrick helmed his first feature, Fear and Desire, it made little impact in the industry, with its low-budget approach demonstrating passion but not necessarily adequate cinematic greatness. Still, a few critics were impressed by the anti-war film, giving Kubrick the determination to continue, but sadly, commercial success was non-existent.
A few years later, he made Killer’s Kiss, which also received some positive reviews, but it didn’t do enough to make a sizable dent in Hollywood. Kubrick didn’t give up, though. The next project he directed was The Killing (are you sensing a theme here?), which was, much to his dismay, a commercial disappointment. In a landscape where money is everything, not creativity, Kubrick needed his films to earn enough profit so that he could continue making them, and the failure of The Killing left his career hanging in the balance.
Thus, when Kubrick tried to get his next film picked up, nobody wanted it. Paths of Glory was pitched as an adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s novel of the same name, but the lack of success Kubrick had previously failed to earn put studios off from financing it. Talking to Gene D Phillips, Kubrick explained that studios didn’t want to pursue the project, “not because it was an anti-war film about World War I, they just didn’t like it.”
So, not only were studios worried that there could be an issue with the movie finding success, they were also simply uninterested in Kubrick’s idea. However, when Kirk Douglas heard about the film, he expressed interest in appearing in the lead role, and this led to Kubrick receiving the green light. United Artists agreed to finance the film in spite of the filmmaker’s previous failures, and this decision changed the course of Kubrick’s career.
While Paths of Glory was controversial due to its anti-war sentiment, it showed real talent, and Kubrick would collaborate with Douglas again three years later on Spartacus, which received many fantastic reviews and became incredibly popular at the box office. Kubrick might not have found his feet in the industry straight away, but once he did, he proved that none of his ideas were too bold or risky for a studio to take on – he was a truly ambitious and revolutionary artist.
