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Great Directors

Film Studies 120. Great Directors. The 1960s Boom. In the 1960s, British studios began to enjoy major success in the international market with a string of films that displayed a more liberal attitude to sex:

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Great Directors

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  1. Film Studies 120 Great Directors

  2. The 1960s Boom • In the 1960s, British studios began to enjoy major success in the international market with a string of films that displayed a more liberal attitude to sex: • For example, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966) broke taboos around the portrayal of sex and nudity on screen.

  3. The 1960s Boom CLIP: Michelangelo Antonioni Blowup (1966) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlb5HdDNQoM&feature=related

  4. The 1960s Boom • At the same time, the James Bond series with Sean Connery in the leading role became a phenomenal success: • The first film, Dr. No (1962), became a national success, and the second, From Russia with Love (1963), a hit worldwide. • By the time of the third film, Goldfinger (1964), the series had become a global phenomenon, reaching its commercial peak with Thunderball the following year.

  5. The 1960s Boom CLIP: Guy Hamilton Goldfinger (1964) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdQoSK9wibU

  6. The 1960s Boom • American directors were regularly working in London throughout the 1960s, but several became permanent residents in the UK. • Stanley Kubrick settled in England in the early 60s and would remain there for the rest of his career. • Dr. Strangelove was filmed at Shepperton Studios, in London

  7. Stanley Kubrick(July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) • Stanley Kubrick was an American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor, who lived in England during the last 40 years of his career. • Kubrick was known for the variety of genres he worked in, his technical perfectionism and his reclusiveness about his professional and personal life.

  8. Stanley Kubrick(July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) • Kubrick worked beyond the confines of the Hollywood Studios system, maintaining almost complete artistic control over his films. • Kubrick is widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished, innovative and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema: • He directed a number of highly acclaimed and often controversial films, characterized by a meticulous attention to detail.

  9. Stanley Kubrick(July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) Kubrick: the Photographer Self-portrait, “Stan Kubrick”–style, 1950. • Kubrick became a photographer for Look in 1946. • Self-portrait (1950) from the Look Magazine Photograph Collection, The Library of Congress.

  10. Stanley Kubrick:The Documentarist • In 1951, Kubrick's friend Alex Singer persuaded him to start making short documentaries for The March of Time, a provider of newsreels to movie theatres. Kubrick agreed, and shot the independently financed Day of the Fight(1951): • The film notably employed a tracking shot, which would become one of Kubrick's signature camera movements. • A Tracking Shot (or dolly shot) is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken. The tracking shot can include smooth movements forward, backward, along the side of the subject, or on a curve.

  11. Stanley Kubrick:The Documentarist • Inspired by this early success, Kubrick quit his job at Look magazine and began working on his second short documentary, Flying Padre(1951), funded by RKO. • The Seafarers(1953), Kubrick's third documentary and first color film, was a 30-minute promotional film for the Seafarers' International Union. • Day of the Fight, Flying Padre and The Seafarers constitute Kubrick's only surviving work in the documentary genre.

  12. Stanley Kubrick:The Documentarist CLIP: Stanley Kubrick Flying Padre (1951) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqWEd9w6qKQ&feature=related

  13. Stanley Kubrick:The 1950s • Kubrick moved to narrative feature films with Fear and Desire(1953), the story of a team of soldiers caught behind enemy lines in a fictional war. In later life, Kubrick was embarrassed by the film, which he dismissed as an amateur effort. • Kubrick’s next film, Killer's Kiss(1954), is a short feature film about a young heavyweight boxer at the end of his career. • Both Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss were privately funded by Kubrick's family and friends and met with limited commercial and critical success.

  14. Stanley Kubrick:The 1950s • Kubrick’s next film, The Killing(1956), is a story about a meticulously planned race track robbery gone wrong after the mobsters get away with the money. • The Killing was Kubrick's first full-length feature film, shot with a professional cast and crew. It had a nonlinear storyline (imitated nearly 40 years later by director Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs).

  15. Stanley Kubrick:The 1950s • Tarantino has acknowledged Kubrick's The Killing as a major influence. • The Killing followed the conventions of film noir, both in its plotting and cinematography style. Today, many critics regard this film as one of the best of the noir genre. • While it was not a financial success, it received good reviews.

  16. Kubrick vs. Tarantino Kubrick Tarantino

  17. Stanley Kubrick:The 1950s • Kubrick's next film Paths of Glory(1957) was set during World War I and based on H. Cobb's 1935 antiwar novel of the same name. • Cast as Colonel Dax, Kirk Douglas was instrumental in securing financing for the production. • The film was critically acclaimed, establishing Kubrick as a major up-and-coming young filmmaker. Steven Spielberg has named this one of his favorite Kubrick films.

  18. Stanley Kubrick:Paths of Glory (1957)

  19. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Kubrick's next film Spartacus (1960) was based upon the true story of a doomed uprising of Roman slaves. • Spartacus was a difficult production: • Kubrick and Douglas reportedly had a stormy working relationship. The friendship the two men had formed on Paths of Glory was destroyed by the experience of making the film. Years later, Douglas referred to Kubrick as "a talented shit."

  20. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Spartacuswas a critical and commercial success and established Kubrick as a major director: • Its embattled production convinced Kubrick to find ways of working with Hollywood financing while remaining independent of its production system => Spartacusis the only Kubrick’s film in which he had no hand in the screenplay,no final cut,no producing credit, nor any say in the casting (it was largely Kirk Douglas' project). • Spartacuswould go on to win 4 Oscars.

  21. Stanley Kubrick:Spartacus (1960)

  22. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • In 1962, Kubrick moved to England to film Lolita. The original motivation was to film the film in a country with laxer censorship laws. • Kubrick remained in England to film Dr. Strangelove (1964) => Peter Sellers was not permitted to leave England at the time as he was involved in divorce proceedings. • It was after filming Lolita and Dr. Strangelovethat Kubrick decided to settle in England permanently.

  23. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Lolita was Kubrick's first film to generate major controversy. • Based on the book by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita dealt with an affair between a middle-aged man named HumbertHumbertand his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. • Lolita was already notorious as an "obscene" novel when Kubrick embarked on the project.

  24. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Prior to Lolita’s release, Kubrick realized that to get a Production Code seal, the screenplay would have to not be overly provocative, treading lightly with its theme. • As a result, the novel's more perverse aspects were toned down in the final cut, leaving much to the viewer's imagination. • Kubrick would later say that had he known the severity of the censorship he would face, he probably would not have made the film.

  25. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Lolita received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Sue Lyon, who played the title role, won a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer. • Film critic Gene Youngblood holds that stylistically Lolita is a transitional film for Kubrick, "marking the turning point from a naturalistic cinema...to the surrealism of the later films."

  26. Stanley Kubrick:Lolita (1962)

  27. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Kubrick's next film, Dr. Strangelove (1964), became a cult film and is now considered a classic. • Based upon the novel Red Alertby ex flight lieutenant Peter George, the screenplay was co-written by Kubrick and George. • Red Alert is a cautionary tale of accidental atomic war. However, Kubrick found the conditions leading to nuclear war so absurd that he transformed the story into a sinister macabre comedy.

  28. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • The film prefigured the antiwar sentiments of the later 1960s that would become explosive only a few years after its release. • Peter Sellers, who had played a small part in Lolita, was hired to play four roles in Dr. Strangelove. • He eventually played three, due to an injured leg and his difficulty in mastering a Texas accent.

  29. Stanley Kubrick:Dr. Strangelove (1964)

  30. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Kubrick spent five years developing his next film, 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968). • The film was conceived as a Cinerama spectacle and was photographed in Super Panavision 70. • Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, expanding on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel.”

  31. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • The $10,000,000 (U.S.) film was a massive production for its time: • The groundbreaking visual effects were overseen by Kubrick and were engineered by a team that included Douglas Trumbull, who would become famous for his work on the film Blade Runner. • Although it eventually became an enormous success, the film was not an immediate hit: • Initial critical reaction was extremely hostile, with critics attacking the film's lack of dialogue, slow pacing, and complex storyline.

  32. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • The 1960s counterculture audience loved the movie's "Star Gate" psychedelic sequence. • Despite nominations in the directing, writing, and producing categories, the only Academy Award Kubrick ever received was for supervising the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey. • Today, 2001: A Space Odyssey is considered the greatest sci-fi film ever made, and it is a staple on Top 10 lists of all-time.

  33. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • Artistically, 2001 was a radical departure from Kubrick's previous films. • It contains only 45 minutes of spoken dialogue, over a running time of two hours and twenty minutes. • Some argue that Kubrick is portraying a future humanity largely dissociated from its environment. The film's ambiguous, perplexing ending continues to fascinate contemporary audiences and critics.

  34. Stanley Kubrick:The 1960s • 2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps Kubrick's most famous and influential film: • Steven Spielberg called it his generation's big bang. • It was a precursor to the explosion of the science fiction film market nine years later, which began with the release of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  35. Stanley Kubrick:2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

  36. The 1970s • In the 1970s, the film industry in both the United Kingdom and the United States entered into recession. American studios cut back on domestic production, and in many cases withdrew from financing British films altogether. • Large-scale productions were still being mounted, but they were more sporadic and sometimes seemed old-fashioned compared with the competition from America. • Among the more successful were adaptations of the Agatha Christie stories’ Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978).

  37. The 1970s

  38. The 1970s • A major influence on British comedy films in the 1970s was the Monty Python group, from television. • Their two most successful films were Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), the latter a major commercial success.

  39. The 1970s

  40. The 1970s • More relaxed censorship in the 1970s also brought several controversial films such as Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). • We’ll talk about this movie next week.

  41. The 1970s • The late-1970s at least saw a revival of the James Bond series with The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). • Some American productions did return to the major British studios in the late-1970s, including Star Wars (1977) at Elstree Studios, Superman (1978) at Pinewood, and Alien (1979) at Shepperton.

  42. The 1980s • The decade began with the worst recession the British film industry had ever seen. • In 1980 only 31 British films were made (down 50% on the previous year) and production was down again the following year, to 24 films.

  43. The 1980s • In 1983, Gandhi won an Academy Award for best picture, prompting a cycle of bigger budget period films: • David Lean's final film A Passage to India (1984) • A Room with a View (1986) • However, further attempts to make 'big' productions for the US market ended in failure. • By this stage the rest of the new talent had moved on to Hollywood.

  44. The 1980s • The Monty Pythons' influence was still apparent in British comedy films of the 1980s, the most notable examples being: • Terry Gilliam's fantasy films Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985) • John Cleese'sA Fish Called Wanda (1988)

  45. The 1990s • In the early-1990s, Kenneth Branagh’sThe Madness of King George (1994) proved there was still a market for the traditional British costume drama, and a large number of other period films followed: • Sense and Sensibility (1995) • Restoration (1995) • Emma (1996) • Mrs. Brown (1997) • The Wings of the Dove (1997) • Shakespeare in Love (1998) • Topsy-Turvy (1999)

  46. The 1990s • Several of these period films were funded by Miramax Films, who also took over Anthony Minghella'sThe English Patient (1996) when the production ran into difficulties during filming. • Although technically an American production, the success of this film, including its 9 Academy Award wins would bring further prestige to British filmmakers.

  47. The 1990s • The surprise success of Richard Curtis’s Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), which grossed $244 million worldwide and introduced Hugh Grant to global fame, led to renewed interest and investment in British films, and set a pattern for British-set romantic comedies, including: • Peter Howitt’sSliding Doors (1998) • Roger Michell’sNotting Hill (1999)

  48. The 1990s • In 1997, The Full Monty unexpectedly became a runaway success and broke British box office records. • Produced for under $4 millions and grossing $257 millions internationally, studios were encouraged to start smaller subsidiaries dedicated to looking for other low budget productions capable of producing similar returns.

  49. The 1990s • After a six-year break, the James Bond films returned to production with GoldenEye (1995). • American productions also began to return to British studios in the mid-1990s, including: • Interview with the Vampire (1994) • Mission: Impossible (1996) • The Fifth Element (1997) • Saving Private Ryan (1998) • Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) • The Mummy (1999)

  50. The 1990s • In the 1990s, Mike Leigh emerged as a significant figure in British cinema with a series of films financed by Channel 4 about working and middle class life in modern England, including: • Life Is Sweet (1991) • Naked (1993) • Secrets and Lies (199.), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

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