On Kubrick (review)

An old joke offers to describe the varied fauna of the Hollywood film industry during its classic era: 'The creative guy is the writer. The rich guy, or the ambitious guy, is the producer. The good-looking guy – or gal – is the star. The director is somebody's brother-in-law.'

This is, of course, the sort of joke certain to drive the auteur critics nuts, but only because the inventors of auteur criticism worked in deep, honest ignorance of how most Hollywood films used to be made. Distant from Southern California capitalism both physically and culturally, the French critics were simply unaware of how generally the Hollywood director of the studio era was – if not necessarily an otherwise unemployable relative of someone important – then a kind of hired hand who performed certain specific chores without having any artistic control over (or perhaps even interest in) the film as a whole. Yet there were exceptions. Despite the tyranny of the studio system, a tiny minority of exceptionally talented directors – Hitchcock, Ford, Huston, Hawks, Wilder, Capra and not many others – did succeed in becoming something a little like auteurs in the sense that the French critics intended. Though none ever exercised the kind of control over any film that a novelist has over a novel (the favourite false analogy of the auteur critics), each did manage to establish a distinctive style and set of concerns. But the American director who stands as the most thoroughgoing auteur of them all – the one who, if he were typical rather than wildly atypical, would actually justify auteur criticism – belongs to a somewhat later period: Stanley Kubrick.

Significantly, Kubrick not only made all but one of his feature films after the final dissolution of the studio system in 1954, but also made most of his films at a considerable distance, geographical and otherwise, from Southern California (though, unlike Orson Welles, the other great American expatriate director, he maintained important working relations with Hollywood). A writer, producer, editor and photographer as well as a director, Kubrick maintained a degree of control over his films probably unsurpassed in cinematic history – his perfectionism often leading him to work at a (by Hollywood standards) excruciatingly methodical pace in order to achieve precisely the effects he wanted. Of course Kubrick had numerous helpers, assistants and sub-contractors, for nobody can make a film single-handedly. But, for most of his career (and despite what Arthur C. Clarke may have thought about his own role in 2001: A Space Odyssey (UK/US 1968)), Kubrick had, and desired, no real collaborators.

He is thus an ideal subject for the kind of monographic treatment that James Naremore gives him in On Kubrick; and Naremore has done his work with a painstaking thoroughness that might be described as Kubrickian. Extremely well informed about all aspects of Kubrick's career and about film in general, Naremore offers important social and biographical background as well as a detailed critical discussion of each of Kubrick's feature films (with the exception of Spartacus (US 1960), the only film on which Kubrick did work as a hired hand). Naremore provides useful accounts of the production history of each of Kubrick's films, and, on the more textual level, he is as knowledgeable in discussing technical questions of cinematography as in dealing with narrative and thematic aspects of the films and the latter's intellectual and emotional impact. Naremore's close readings seem to me generally balanced and persuasive, but, whether one agrees with him or not, there is no question but that anyone wishing to think intelligently about Kubrick needs to consult this volume. While quite hefty (much more so than the page count suggests, since a full page contains about 650 words), it is written in a clear, fluent style that is enjoyable to read. I first read it while crammed into a cheap seat on an overnight transatlantic flight, and, even under these unpropitious circumstances, my interest never flagged.

For all its strengths, however, On Kubrick falls short...