Trauma and temporary blindness: how Stanley Kubrick tortured two of his greatest stars
Becoming one of the greatest directors in cinema history doesn’t happen without a few eggs getting cracked, and Stanley Kubrick had no issues putting his performers through the wringer in his career-long quest for greatness.
Stepping back to admire the onscreen legacy he left behind, it’s hard to argue with the results. Kubrick isn’t just responsible for several of the greatest movies ever made; he laid down a marker that inspired every generation that followed in his wake.
Ask any of the modern era’s most notable auteurs to list their favourite features, formative experiences, or towering inspirations, and virtually every single one of them will mention his name. Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Christopher Nolan are just a few, which barely scratches the surface of how far his shadow stretches across the moving image.
Such a ruthless quest for perfection was always going to place great stress upon the actors tasked with realising Kubrick’s vision, and two got it tougher than most. Kirk Douglas had his issues with the maestro, but he got off relatively easily compared to a pair who suffered more than the rest in the name of doing justice to the director’s intentions.
Malcolm McDowell was a relative newcomer to the big screen when he was cast as Alex in A Clockwork Orange, which remains the definitive performance of an extensive career more than 50 years later. He was fully dedicated and intensely committed to the character, which came at great expense to his well-being more than once.
For the unforgettable scene where Alex has his eyes pried open and is subjected to the Ludovico method, McDowell was rendered temporarily blind when the contraption used to pry his eyeballs wide open gave him a scratched cornea. It’s an injury capable of sending shivers down the spine, but it was far from the only malady endured by the leading man.
In an interview with NME, McDowell revealed that there was genuine concern among the crew that Kubrick would go too far. “One of the electricians said, ‘He’s trying to kill you Malc, he’s trying to kill you,” the actor recalled. “He was a control freak, without a doubt, on everything.”
He even ended up with a couple of cracked ribs after a little too much enthusiasm was applied to one of the many beatings Alex took during the story, with Kubrick determined that it looked as authentic as possible. Once his ribs had been cracked, did he decide enough was enough and give his star time to rest up and heal? Of course not. It wasn’t even the final take because the show must always go on.
A decade later, and Shelley Duvall experienced similar – albeit psychological rather than physical – woes collaborating with Kubrick. Her experience in The Shining has become the stuff of industry legend, and while her stance towards the filmmaker and what he put her through gradually softened with the passage of time, that doesn’t make it any less troubling.
Physically exhausted, mentally drained, emotionally tortured, and subjected to dozens upon dozens of takes until any given Wendy Torrance scene was pulled off to his satisfaction, Duvall couldn’t wait for production on The Shining to be over so that she could finally escape the meticulous wrath of its creator.
In one respect, it has to be said that his unpalatable approach worked because McDowell and Duvall gave two iconic turns in a pair of all-time great films. In another, it’s entirely reasonable and completely fair to assume that each actor would have been just as good even without Kubrick continually pushing them further than they wanted to go.
