The director Stanley Kubrick said will be remembered in 100 years: “His films will last longer than anyone else’s”
Stanley Kubrick knew a thing or two about cinema. From the moment he began making films, no one had any doubt that he would become something. Sure, his first film, Fear and Desire, wasn’t great, but his ambition to become an unforgettable filmmaker was abundantly clear.
Rarely is a first attempt going to be perfect, and within a few years, with more experience under his belt, Kubrick cemented his place in Hollywood as a true master. With an idiosyncratic visual style that always felt ahead of the curve, he brought sci-fi to uncharted waters with 2001: A Space Odyssey while violence was explored with equal parts wit and terror in his adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.
Kubrick invented his own cinematic language, whether he was leaving us to figure out open-ended questions – like what exactly happens at the end of Space Odyssey – or immersing us in abstract sequences of pure heightened sensory experience, like that Eyes Wide Shut orgy sequence, which is so visceral and chilling, and the drill sergeant sequences in Full Metal Jacket. He created so many lasting images, no matter how terrifying or beautiful.
The director had a knack for crafting worlds so immersive that it becomes hard to ever shake them from your mind, but Kubrick was adamant that it doesn’t always matter what a shot necessarily looks like if the events depicted on screen are indelible enough, and some might disagree, but this is coming from a cinematic master, after all.
He used Charlie Chaplin as the ultimate example of this, suggesting that the legendary silent icon’s movies weren’t the most stunning in terms of their visual make-up, but they did something for cinema that was truly enduring, regardless. He once claimed, as reported by the BFI, “If something is really happening on the screen, it isn’t crucial how it’s shot. Chaplin had such a simple cinematic style that it was almost like I Love Lucy, but you were always hypnotised by what was going on, unaware of the essentially non-cinematic style.”
For this reason, Kubrick was confident that Chaplin’s work would live on for years to come, a prediction that you can hardly dispute. I remember an old film lecturer of mine telling my class that they simply couldn’t claim to be interested in cinema if they’d never bothered to watch a Chaplin film. Sure, comedy and cinema as a whole have changed drastically since the days of Chaplin’s slapstick-infused tales, but watching a Chaplin film is like glimpsing back to where it all really began; every production of his was practically a miracle act.
He combined humour with nuance and, for the first time, many audiences had their eyes opened to the true capabilities of using humour and satire to tell a story, even if the topic was as hefty as dictatorship, homelessness, or war.
“He frequently used cheap sets, routine lighting and so forth, but he made great films. His films will probably last longer than anyone else’s,” Kubrick said. A century on, and we still revere titles like The Gold Rush, The Kid, and City Lights. They’re so highly celebrated for a reason.
