News just in, we've just heard that the film director Stanley Kubrick has died at the age of 70.Kubrick, who was an American, began his career in Hollywood where he directed Spartacus but he decided to move to Britain where he directed Lolita, Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odysey and The Shining.Stanley Kubrick was widely regarded as one of the greatest and most controversial masters of cinema. He just finished what was to be his last film, Eyes Wide Shut which took five years to make.Stanley Kubrick has been called the Howard Hughes of cinema because he was such a recluse. I prefer to think of him as the Frank Sinatra of cinema because he always did everthing in his way. You can go back to any Kubrick film and feel rebirth.This filmmakeer only directed 13 films in 40 years. But each of them has been an event. This filmmaker has made the best epic film, the best science fiction film, the best film about urban violence, the best horror film, the best film about the Vietnam war.Kubrick is at the very least a genuine innovator who pushes out the boundaries of what is possible on film and there have never been too many of those about. He is also an elusive man who rarely permits himself to be observed at work.He was not any of the things that the newspapers wrote about him. And he himself said, "It's very difficult. How do I defend myself?" Do I write an article, you know, 'Dear public, I'm charming'?"That's more difficult than it sounds, actually. Cause, you know, he never does a television, or very rarely does any press interviews.The masterstroke is a succession of interviews that Michel Ciment had with Stanley Kubrick over time, over 10 years. It is brought to us in this book. I guess it wasn't an easy task to be adopted by Kubrik and to get close to a giant lik Kubrick.Kubrick doesn't adopt anybody. He tolerated me or temporarily accepted me just for an interview. One cannot become Kubrick's intimate friend.Where does your passion for Kubrick come from?How come you're one of the few journalists in the world who got in touch with him? How did you do it?He read an article I wrote about his work in 1968. It was the first major study in France. And when A Clockwork Orange came out, he granted me an interview for Express magazine. So I met with him in London.Does he review what you write about him? Do you send him a copy?He doesn't review what I write about him, he only reviews what he told me.Well, perhaps the first question would be about this problem of interview because it seems that more and more you feel reluctant to speak about your films?Well, I've never found it meaningful or even possible to talk about film aesthetics in terms of my own films. I also don't particularly enjoy the interviews because one always feels under the obligation to say some witty, brilliant summary of the intentions of the films. And with Dr. Strangelove, you could talk about the problems of Nuclear War, 2001 you could talk about extraterrestrial intelligence, but I've never been able......Clockwork Orange about violence.Yes, or future, social structures. I mean, I don't know what led me to make any of the films, really, that I made. And I realised that my own thought processes are very hard to define, in terms of, you know, what story do you want to make into a film. In the end, you know, it does become this very indefinable thing like why do you find one particular girl attractive or why did you marry your wife.Yes, and also, I suppose it is more difficult for you to analyse yourself because the material comes from somebody else. So, it's more difficult to see the personal reasons that were behind it since you didn't write it yourself. But obviously the choice of the subject is a very personal thing, because you can choose from thousands of books and you choose one. You become the author of the book in a way by choosing it.Well, if somebody else has sritten the story, you have the one great first reading. You never again, once you read something for the first time, can ever have that experience, and the judgment of the narrative and the sense of excitement of what parts of the story reach you emotionally, is something wihch doesn't exist if you write a story.We know, I mean, everybody knows, its’s notorious that you love to accumulate information, do researches. I mean, is it a thrill for you? I mean, like being a reporter or a detective? It is a little bit like a detective looking for clues. On Barry Lyndon, I created a picture file of thousands of drawings and paintings. I think I’ ve destroyed every art book that you can buy in a bookshop by tearing the pages out, sorting them out. But the costumes were all copied from paintings. I mean, none of the costumes were, quote, “designed”. It’s stupid to have a, quote, a “designer” interpret the 18th century as they may remember it from art school or from a few pictures they get together.Would you agree that the more illusion works the more realistic it is? The cinema has to extremely realistic, you know, to create illusion?Well, I would always be attracted to something which offered interesting visual possibilities, but that certainly wouldn’t be the only reason. And, since part of the problem of any story is to make you believe what you are seeing, certainly getting a realistic atmosphere, especially if it’s not a contemporary period, is just necessary as a starting point.It’s why you came to this idea of shooting with light, natural light.Well, that’s something that I’ve always been very bothered by in period films, is the light on interiors. It’s so false.It was very different to any kind of other movies as far as photography was concerned, because the lightning was so... you know, lots of it were shot by candlelight, a lot of it was shot with equipment that Stanley Kubrick had found, that had never been used before on any other films. So it was quite an experience working with that. It was also quite difficult because there were times when you just couldn’t even move a fraction of an inch. And there were days where we would sit there and just be lit all day. You know, literally.Samuel, I’m going outside for a breath of air.Yes, my lady, of course.To know about lighting and lenses and composition has to be a help as a movie director.I remember when I was making Spartacus, the cameraman, Russ Metty, used to think it was very funny that I sued to pick set-ups with a view finder, and he said to me, you know, “We’re shooting in that direction and it’s a knee figure shot, and just, you know, you go and rehearse with the actors and when you come back, we’ll have the shot and set-up and everything.” He couldn’t understand why I wanted to waste time making a composition. Certainly, photography gave me the first step where I could actually try to make a movie because without that, how could you make a movie by yourself if you didn’t know anything about photography?What kind of photographs were you doing?I mean, there is the famous photograhpy of the newspaper vendor and the Photojournalism with natural light. Mostly things of the street like Cartier Bresson.Well, unfortunately, because Look always did feature stories, the subject matter always tended to be idiotic. They would do a story like “ Is an athlete stronger than a baby?” And I ould have to go and there’d be some guy that would have to try to get in the same positions as a baby and things like that. They would pretty stupid feature stories but occasionally I could do a sort of personality story, or a story about something like an universtiy or something like that where you had a chance to take some reasonable photographs.You were four years at Look?Yeah, about four years. I was about 20.This forest then and all that happens now is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear, and doubt and death are from our world.。

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