Weird Scenes Week 84 (11/11/21): Questions Within Enigma: the films of Stanley Kubrick

Born and raised in the Bronx, Stanley Kubrick started off as a photographer for magazines noted for such like Look, and that’s something that carried through in most dramatic fashion in his subsequent film career.

Almost uniquely in Hollywood, he managed to move from totally self-produced outsider cinema to decades funded by more traditional channels…and yet otherwise entirely self-directed, produced, scripted and more.  The man managed to have a cottage industry for his films, allowing for more quirks and control over the final product than even much feted auteurist directors like Hitchcock have ever been able to claim.  

And yet, for all that financial and distribution advantage and personal control, he really seemed to choose some questionable material to tackle, and while much feted with awards and accolades, delivered a stream of very rocky pictures, more head scratching if visually sumptuous misses than enduring hits.  His demanding nature led to many a conflict with his casts, and where most directors of his era easily produced twice if not three times as many films within the same span of time, he ultimately only dropped a handful of films, whose ultimate merit is all over the map.

Ultimately, all he left us was a trio of awkward no budget noir crime films in the 50s, a few scandalous oddities in the 60’s and very early 70s, one dour historical that lacked either enough erotic or comic content to link it to the trend, a much beloved if unusual horror film of sorts and literally one film each in his two final decades: one attempt to tackle the then de rigeur Vietnam reminiscence and one seemingly Decadent erotic horror that attaches the expected spice to the tangled occult skein of films like The Order to the Ice Storm like loss of passion in a marriage and how a trip to the edge and near misses with realistic consequences (like nearly spending the night with an HIV positive partner) bring a straying couple back home to each other.  

Join us tonight as we talk one of the most praised yet controversial and ultimately in most ways quite spotty directors in American cinema, the one and only Stanley Kubrick, right here on Weird Scenes.   

Week 84: Questions Within Enigma: the films of Stanley Kubrick 

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