Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick, Stanley - kooˈbrĭk, kyooˈ–, 1928–99, American film director, writer, and producer, b. New York City. His visually stunning, thematically daring, boldly idiosyncratic, and darkly compelling films generally portray a deeply flawed humanity. Kubrick made several documentary shorts in the 1950s, turning to film noir features with Fear and Desire (1953), Killer's Kiss (1955), and The Killing (1956). He scored his first hit with the bleak antiwar drama Paths of Glory (1957). After completing the Roman epic Spartacus (1960), he left Hollywood (1961) to move to England. He soon made a series of brilliant films: the sexualized, sad, and uproariously comic Lolita (1962), the apocalyptic black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964), the science-fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and the violently futuristic A Clockwork Orange (1971). Kubrick's later films include Barry Lyndon (1975); The Shining (1987), a terrifying version of Stephen King's novel; the bitter Vietnam-era Full Metal Jacket (1987); and the psychosexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut (1999), his last film, called a masterpiece by some critics and a pretentious disappointment by others.

See biography by V. Lobrutto (1997); G. Phillips, Stanley Kubrick: A Film Odyssey (1975); T. A. Nelson, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze (1982); M. Ciment, Kubrick (1983); N. Kagan, The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick (1989); M. Falsetto, Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis (1994).

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