Kubrick Film Quotes & Sayings

If Kubrick had lived to see the opening of his final film, he obviously would have been disappointed by the hostile reactions. But I'm sure that in the end he would have taken it with a grain of salt and moved on. That's the lot of all true visionaries, who don't see the use of working in the same vein as everyone else. Artists like Kubrick have minds expansive and dynamic enough to picture the world in motion, to comprehend not just where its been, but where it's going. — Martin Scorsese

A film needs more than you can give it in a lifetime. — Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece. — Tim Cahill

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film - and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level - but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point. — Stanley Kubrick

Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, 'This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments.' I hear people try to do it
give the five-line summary
but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant. — Stanley Kubrick

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all. — Stanley Kubrick

The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage. — Stanley Kubrick

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups. — Sydney Pollack

The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film. — Stanley Kubrick

When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination. — Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick never explained the ending to us, or what his intentions were. He didn't intend for it to be a predictable film. — Keir Dullea

With Kubrick and most film directors, they are in complete control, but one can influence them. — Ken Adam

There were IBM logos designed for the film, and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens. — Douglas Trumbull

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high? — Martin Scorsese

I'm a slave to my imagination in terms of making narrative films. — Stanley Kubrick

A lot of cinematic influences on 'Descender' - Kubrick for sure. '2001: A Space Odyssey' is my favorite movie. It has been since I was 12. I just love that film. — Jeff Lemire

As filmmakers, we want the audience to have the most complete experience they can. For example, I interviewed Stanley Kubrick years ago around the time of '2001: A Space Odyssey.' I was going to see the film that night in London, and he insisted I sit in one of four seats in the theater for the best view or not watch the film. — Michael Mann

[When asked if he had ever learned anything about his work from film criticism]
No. To see a film once and write a review is an absurdity. Yet very few critics ever see a film twice or write about films from a leisurely, thoughtful perspective. The reviews that distinguish most critics, unfortunately, are those slambang pans which are easy to write and fun to write and absolutely useless. There's not much in a critic showing off how clever he is at writing silly, supercilious gags about something he hates. — Stanley Kubrick

It's hard enough to make a film without everyone saying, "Hang on, is this version as good as the one Kubrick would have made?" In peoples' minds they'll always think if Kubrick had done it it would be so much better. You don't need that extra stress. — Chris Cunningham

If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive. — Stanley Kubrick

During the 1970s (and particularly because of Vietnam), it slowly became standard for absolutely everyone to go to college, particularly if they had no desire to get a real job. One of the results was a massive population of film school students, most of whom became waiters and valets in the 1980s. Since the vast majority of these Kubrick wannabes couldn't crack the motion picture industry, they saw opportunities to make minimovies in the world of rock 'n' roll. — Chuck Klosterman

Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space. — Camille Paglia

It's a passion when you're doing it for other people and you're doing it for the people around you making the film and the people who are going to see the film, and the giving. When you start thinking about you doing it for some sort of self-gain, then I think it becomes an obsession. It becomes a negative experience. — Stanley Kubrick

It's often the case with directors that they don't like to share credit, which is the case of Stanley. He would prefer just A Film By Stanley Kubrick including music and everything. — Terry Southern

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images. — David Lynch

[On Dr. Strangelove]: My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. [...] What could be more absurd than the very idea of two mega powers willing to wipe out all human life because of an accident, spiced up by political differences that will seem as meaningless to people a hundred years from now as the theological conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today? — Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema's conventions. — Bryan Singer

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started. — Keir Dullea

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later. — Stanley Kubrick

Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling. — Stanley Kubrick

Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie — Stanley Kubrick

The best education in film is to make one — Stanley Kubrick

Observation is a dying art. — Stanley Kubrick

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want. — Stanley Kubrick

I haven't come across any recent new ideas in film that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it. — Stanley Kubrick

I think one of the thing that makes a Kubrick film a great experience is the fact that he bends reality to his will and is so confident that he ends up creating something that is the island in the stream of pop culture and he takes a stand that's so firm and so confident and unyielding that it can't be ignored and I appreciate that. — Barry Ptolemy

I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business. — Stanley Kubrick

[Kubrick] was unique in the sense that with each new film he redefined the medium and its possibilities. But he was more than just a technical innovator. Like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face. — Martin Scorsese

I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films. — Stanley Kubrick

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film. — Stanley Kubrick

The lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have. — Stanley Kubrick

You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it. — Stanley Kubrick

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit. — Stanley Kubrick

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion. — Stanley Kubrick