The three directors Stanley Kubrick deemed essential viewing
Waltz through the door of any film school across the world, and you’ll hear a number of directors’ names being tossed around as frequently as a pigskin on Thanksgiving. You already know the kind of filmmakers that are championed, the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick, but they’re discussed for a reason: they’re quite simply the best in the business.
Whilst Scorsese and Tarantino remain huge names in the industry, Kubrick, who passed away in 1999, left a remarkable lasting legacy that covered almost each and every genre of cinema. His most iconic work that remains beloved among film scholars and stoners alike is the 1968 sci-fi 2001: A Space Odyssey, which went on to inspire multiple other classics from the likes of Ridley Scott, James Cameron and Christopher Nolan.
Indeed, countless filmmakers owe their inspirations to Kubrick, with the director providing the blueprints for how to make some of the greatest genre movies. Aside from 2001, Kubrick demonstrated how to build intensity and horror during the making of 1980’s The Shining, taught a lesson in satire with Dr. Strangelove and even suggested how to deliver convincing erotica with Eyes Wide Shut.
But, when it came to Kubrick himself, he had a range of favourite films but only considered three filmmakers utterly essential.
Speaking back in the 1960s, Kubrick exclaimed: “I believe [Ingmar] Bergman, [Vittorio] De Sica and [Federico] Fellini are the only three filmmakers in the world who are not just artistic opportunists. By this I mean they don’t just sit and wait for a good story to come along and then make it. They have a point of view which is expressed over and over and over again in their films, and they themselves write or have original material written for them”.
Such makes plenty of sense when you scan your eyes across his 93 favourite movies of all time, with the iconic director including a range of classics from Bergman, De Sica and Fellini. For the Italian movie maestro Fellini, Kubrick mentions the iconic duo La Strada from 1954 and I Vitelloni from 1953, whilst for the Swedish filmmaker Bergman, he highlights 1955’s Smiles of a Summer Night, Cries and Whispers and Wild Strawberries, both of 1972.
Take a look at the trailer for Vittorio De Sica’s 1952 movie Umberto D below, a classic of the 1950s that starred the likes of Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, and Lina Gennari.
