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Tue, Jun 17, 2008
Series to Include All of Kubrick's Feature Films and Screening of 2001 in 70mm
In July and August, the Wexner Center presents a 10-night, 13-film retrospective of acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s work, including a rare 70mm screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey and his little-seen first feature Fear and Desire. Retrospective: Stanley Kubrick kicks off July 10 with Barry Lyndon, Kubrick’s sumptuous adaptation of William Thackeray’s novel. It concludes on August 22 with his masterful interpretation of Stephen King’s The Shining.
One of the most distinctive filmmakers of the post-WWII era, Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) was celebrated—and criticized—for his exacting attention to virtually all aspects of his productions. Kubrick joined a commanding visual sense to a darkly comic worldview, instinctively defiant of authority yet sensitive to the values of art and literature.
Film curator Dave Filipi notes: “This retrospective allows viewers to reacquaint themselves with the work of this singular filmmaker. To see these films on the big screen, as they were meant to be seen, will be a rare treat for longtime fans and viewers new to the Kubrick canon.”
Tickets for each night of the retrospective are $7 general public; $5 members, students, and senior citizens; $3 children under 12. All will be screened in the center’s state-of-the-art Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St. inside the Wexner Center. More information: 614 292-3535 or www.wexarts.org.
Convenient parking is available in Ohio State’s Ohio Union Garage and Arps Garage, both with entrances from North High Street and College Road. Parking is also available nearby at the South Campus Gateway Garage, located one block east of North Street between 9th and 11th Avenues.
RETROSPECTIVE: STANLEY KUBRICK
Thursday, July 10 7 pm: Barry Lyndon (1975, 184 mins.)
Undoubtedly among Kubrick’s most visually stunning films, Barry Lyndon is an adaptation of William Thackeray’s 19th-century satirical novel about an ambitious young Irish man’s misadventures as he works his way up through the British class system. The elaborate care given to exact period detail, and the unparalleled quality of natural and artificial light, justify Kubrick’s reputation as a perfectionist. Few other films have visualized past history this hauntingly. With Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, and Patrick Magee; narrated by Michael Hordern.
Friday, July 11
70mm print 7 pm: 2001: A Space Oyssey (1968, 141 mins.)
Few films have informed their zeitgeist as much as 2001: A Space Odyssey did the late 1960s. Kubrick’s epic fantasia took Arthur C. Clarke’s original sci-fi story—spanning from the dawning of human consciousness to the first human encounters with extraterrestrial intelligence—as the basis for a genuine visual tour de force, that’s unlike anything seen in movies before or since. Both slyly comic and truly chilling, it’s also notable for the way its nominal stars (Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood) are utterly upstaged by the selfless, ever-obliging, tragic HAL.
Saturday, July 12 7 pm: Spartacus (1960, 198 mins.)
Spartacus brought Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo out of his McCarthy-era blacklisted exile, as he adapted Howard Fast’s novel about a rebellion among slaves of the Roman Empire. An acclaimed restoration in 1991 brought the film back to its original length. Kirk Douglas starred, produced, and brought Kubrick on board as director. Also with Peter Ustinov, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Woody Strode, Laurence Olivier, and, as the fetching slave Olivier likes the looks of, Tony Curtis.
Thursday, July 17 7 pm: Paths of Glory (1957, 87 mins.)
Paths of Glory is the film that brought Kubrick international attention. It’s a sober and beautifully modulated account of a tragic incident based on actual events from WWI. Three French soldiers are sentenced to death as sacrificial victims after their company fails to comply with an incompetent general’s suicidal commands. With Kirk Douglas (again, also as producer), Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Meeker, and Timothy Carey. (87 mins., 35mm)
Thursday, July 24 7 pm: Lolita (1962, 152 mins.)
Kubrick’s first film shot in England, Lolita is based on Vladimir Nabokov’s high-comic novel about the nymphet-chasing Humbert Humbert, which was widely assumed to be unfilmable at the time. The pitch-perfect casting of James Mason as Humbert and Shelley Winters as his alarming landlady, joined by Sue Lyon in the title role, is fully matched by Peter Sellars as Mason’s obsessed adversary. The British locations and roadscapes provide a disorienting counterpoint to the story’s insistently American setting. Although much of Nabokov’s own screenplay was not used, his deeply satiric viewpoint consistently pierces through.
Thursday, July 31 DOUBLE FEATURE 7 pm: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, 93 mins.) 8:45 pm: The Killing (1956, 85 mins.)
An uproarious look at mid-century doomsday scenarios, Dr. Strangelove imagines the consequences of a deranged U.S. general ordering an atomic strike on Russia, and the witheringly lame attempts by the President and the Pentagon to control the damage. With Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, George C. Scott, Keenan Wynn, and Peter Sellars, playing three separate characters, including an prescient caricature of an advisor who might almost be Dr. Henry Kissinger.
Kubrick’s breakout success, The Killing is a compulsively engaging story of a racetrack heist as it comes together and then unravels. The film’s memorable location shooting is matched by a vivid cast of low-life schemers and dreamers, headed by Sterling Hayden, Timothy Carey, Elisha Cook, and Marie Windsor.
Tuesday, August 5 7 pm: Eyes Wide Shut (1999, 159 mins.)
Kubrick died in his sleep while in the final editing of Eyes Wide Shut, bringing a tantalizing closure to his remarkable career. Set on a sound-stage version of New York City (utterly different from the real thing seen in the earlier Killer’s Kiss), the story follows an upper-class couple’s marriage as it appears to unravel over mutual suspicions, jealousies, and possible infidelities. Based on a scandalous Austrian novel from the 1920s by Arthur Schnitzler, the film costars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Thursday, August 7 DOUBLE FEATURE 7 pm: Full Metal Jacket (1987, 116 mins.) 9:10 pm: Killer’s Kiss (1955, 67 mins.)
Harking back to the Vietnam era, Full Metal Jacket is divided in two parts: First, the film follows fresh recruits on Parris Island, being trained by a fanatical drill sergeant. Second, the film switches gears to the heat of combat where death at any moment haunts the now-hardened soldiers. Thirty years after Paths of Glory, Kubrick again resists the military’s instinct for erasing individual dignity. With Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio, Dorian Harewood, Lee Ermey, and Arliss Howard.
Acclaimed for its stunning visualization of New York City, Killer’s Kiss is the director’s second independent feature, shot on the streets on a $40,000 budget raised among friends and relatives. It’s a jazz-scored, noir-like tale of a beaten-down boxer and the revenge scenario he inspires when he succumbs to a prostitute’s wiles. With Frank Silvera, Irene Kane, and Jamie Smith.
Thursday, August 14 DOUBLE FEATURE 7 pm: Fear and Desire (1953, 68 mins.) 8:15 pm: A Clockwork Orange (1971, 136 mins.)
Fear and Desire is Kubrick’s rarely-seen debut feature, a low-budget narrative recalling, in its striking visual sense, the director’s experience as a photojournalist for Look magazine. Photographed and cowritten by the director, the film follows four young G.I.s sent to fight in a war with an unidentified country, an ambitious Cold War allegory tapping into early 1950s militaristic insecurities. With Frank Silvera, Paul Mazursky, and Virginia Leith. Print of Fear and Desire provided by the George Eastman House.
A raucous look at juvenile delinquent subcultures amped up to psychotic proportions, A Clockwork Orange is Kubrick’s X-rated (and until recently, banned in Britain) interpretation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopic novel. Set in a near-future, complete with its own slangy vernacular, it’s a fiercely visualized commentary on the state’s relentless policing of anarchic impulses. With Malcom McDowell and Patrick Magee.
Friday, August 22 7 pm: The Shining (1980, 142 mins.)
The Shining, based on Stephen King’s chilling best-seller, follows the descent into murderous delusion and psychosis of a writer who moves himself and his family to an isolated mountain resort where he’ll serve as off-season caretaker. Then…bad things happen, again and again. With Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Barry Nelson.
SEASON SUPPORT
Significant contributions are also made by the Rohauer Collection Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members.
