The iconic movie performance Stanley Kubrick hated with a passion: “You ever see worse?”
Even though he often pushed them to extremes in order to do it, Stanley Kubrick knew how to get a hell of a performance out of his actors, which often caused some short and long-term friction.
Kirk Douglas gave one of his definitive turns in Spartacus, but he didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye with its director, despite having experienced Kubrick’s meticulous and overbearing nature on Paths of Glory. Still, despite their issues, they managed to deliver a sword-and-sandal classic.
A Clockwork Orange‘s Alex DeLarge has never been displaced as the most famous character Malcolm McDowell has ever played, and as much as he appreciates the movie’s enduring legacy, he’s another one who didn’t depart from the set after his final days with overwhelmingly positive memories of the legendary auteur.
Of course, neither of them can hold a candle to what Shelley Duvall endured on The Shining, and while she did seek to squash some of the urban legends that arose from the Stephen King adaptation’s infamous production, there’s plenty of behind-the-scenes footage revealing that it was hardly sunshine and roses.
Those demanding and exacting standards might be one of the main reasons why, unlike many of cinema’s most successful or consistently acclaimed auteurs, there were hardly any performers who collaborated with Kubrick on more than one picture. His standards were high, and that even applied to films he had nothing to do with, even when they’re among the greatest ever made.
Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind sold more tickets in the United States than any movie before or since, and adjusted for inflation, it’s still the highest-grossing release in cinema history. It won eight competitive Academy Awards and two honorary prizes, and while it’s been placed under renewed scrutiny recently, a masterpiece is still a masterpiece.
The search to find the perfect Scarlett O’Hara is one of Hollywood’s most famous casting calls, with thousands of would-be stars being put through their paces before Vivien Leigh got the nod to deliver an iconic performance in an iconic movie, winning the ‘Best Actress’ Oscar into the bargain.
However, according to Eyes Wide Shut co-writer Frederic Raphael, Kubrick thought she was shite. Not just shite, but he believed it was one of the worst he’d ever witnessed. “During one of many long, long telephone conversations, you told me that you’d been looking at Gone with the Wind,” he recalled.
“Vivien Leigh; you ever see a worse performance?” the 2001: A Space Odyssey maestro asked, which seems harsh, if not outright unfair. Most people who watch movies on even a semi-regular basis have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of performances that are immeasurably worse than Leigh’s, and even if it’s not one of the finest turns ever committed to celluloid, it’s definitely one of the most legendary.
