The James Bond movie that Stanley Kubrick helped to make
There are some filmmakers who sit at the crossroads between arthouse and commercial filmmaking. Just take someone like Denis Villeneuve, capable of making emotional dramas like Incendies as well as blockbusters such as Dune, or indeed Stanley Kubrick, who created 13 movies throughout his career that each questioned how filmmaking should be done, from the 1957’s war flick Paths of Glory to 1980s horror classic The Shining.
Despite the complexity of his films, Kubrick actually cared deeply about the opinion of the general public towards his films, having little admiration for the opinion of newspaper critics. One of the few great filmmakers to make commercial art, Kubrick succeeded with such movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was his biggest box office hit, raking in $146million from a budget of just $10.5m, and even succeeded commercially with his controversial arthouse movie A Clockwork Orange in 1971.
Not one to delve into franchise filmmaking, Kubrick appealed to the market in his own unique way but wasn’t totally opposed to the allure of Hollywood, even delving into the world of James Bond in the mid-1970s.
It was during the production of the 1977 Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me, starring Roger Moore that the director’s skills were requested, with cinematographer Claude Renoir struggling on the 007 set due to his fading eyesight. Unable to see from one end of the vast set to the other, Renoir wasn’t the best person to judge the lighting of the scene, which included a supertanker, so Kubrick was brought in as a favour to advise on how to light the set.
Having worked with Kubrick during the making of Barry Lyndon in 1975, the late production designer Sir Ken Adam quickly thought of the director but was apprehensive to get him onboard after seeing his volatile personality on the set. Despite Adam having vowed never to work with him again, he felt that Kubrick was the right person for the job after having lit several sequences of the 1975 period drama using only candlelight.
Years later, Adam spoke to the BBC about Kubrick’s time as a lighting expert on the Bond movie, revealing that he reluctantly “called Stanley up and asked him down to Pinewood to give me ideas. At first, he said I was out of my mind, but eventually, he agreed to come on a Sunday when only security were around.”
Continuing, he added: “He spent three or four hours with me telling me how he would light the stage. And, of course, the whole thing being in secret appealed to Stanley’s sense of drama. But I knew we would never work together again. And Stanley didn’t ask – he’d been so scared when he saw what happened to me halfway through Barry Lyndon.”
This wasn’t the only imprint a member of the Kubrick family made on The Spy Who Loved Me, with the director’s stepdaughter, Katharina, in charge of making the iconic metal dentures that Richard Kiel wore for his role as Jaws.
The third movie of Moore’s career as 007, The Spy Who Loved Me, follows Bond as he is sent to investigate the hijacking of submarines carrying nuclear warheads with the help of a female K.G.B. agent. A somewhat forgettable entry in the Bond filmography, the film stars the likes of Barbara Bach, Curd Jürgens and Desmond Llewelyn.
Take a look at the scene Kubrick had a hand in producing below.
