Stanley Kubrick - Lolita to A Clockwork Orange

Kubrick's run of films in the 60s is one of the greatest artistic runs in history: Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, one masterpiece after another. Kubrick's run of films in the 60s is one of the greatest artistic runs in history: Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, one masterpiece after another. Kubrick fled Hollywood after Spartacus and his aborted attempt to direct Marlon Brando in One Eyed Jacks. He decided to pitch his tent in a country that was finally free of the burden of Empire, where a generation unscarred by the war and led by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and John Lennon were pulling off the greatest cultural power grab of the twentieth century. In some ways the precise, methodical, obsessively focused sets of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange were the calm, still, eye of the storm. In the maelstrom of the 60s, while everyone was losing their shit, Kubrick was steadily looking into questions of war, sex, violence, consciousness, death, rebirth and so on. What is more he was doing it with intimidating clarity.

There's an Anglo-American chemistry in these films that is pure magic, especially in the humor. Kubrick got English humor better than anyone and understood that it was rich enough and complex enough to animate and elevate the trickiest material, whether it's pedophilia in Lolita or nuclear apocalypse in Strangelove or the prison guard and the doctor and Alex's father in A Clockwork Orange. It's all so fucking hilarious but it's incredibly disturbing too. These are Kubrick's funniest films, there's even something deeply hilarious about HAL shutting down at the end of 2001, and the music in 2001, the Blue Danube, Thus Spake Zarathustra etc. Kubrick orchestrated a freedom for himself in England that allowed him to tackle really extreme material: pedophilia, nuclear war, violence and the collapse of society, the meaning of the universe etc etc. He wouldn't have pulled that off in Hollywood, whatever was exceptional about him would have been obliterated. In England he was an exotic, rarefied being, a kind of prince, especially during the 60s.

The five audio interviews in the video section are really worth listening to. It's so clear that he was an incredibly funny and cool guy. They were done right in the middle of shooting 2001, and the hyper electric intelligence is clear as a bell. I love the way he spells the names of the people he mentions because he's being interviewed by a print journalist and wants the guy to spell everything correctly, and I love the way he talks about his wife and two daughters.

I think Kubrick went to England for some of the same reasons that Emeric Pressburger went to England. Pressburger was seeking refuge from the Nazis while Kubrick sought refuge from Hollywood. I've heard it said that Kubrick was so self-reliant that he could have lived anywhere, but I think there was something about England that Kubrick found comforting, the tea and the manners and the restraint and of course the no nonsense "right guv" brilliance of the film technicians he worked with. There's a certain quality of tolerance and acceptance that made England such a wonderful sanctuary for everyone from Marx to Freud to Pressburger to Kubrick. There's a clip below from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in which Anton Walbrook explains why he wants to come to England from Nazi Germany and what England means to him. It's a great scene. There's also a hilarious clip of Kubrick on the set of Full Metal Jacket having a discussion about all the tea breaks his English crew are taking.