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Brief Lessons John Alcott can Still Teach Us After Working With Stanley Kubrick
We are about to reach 70 years since the first Stanley Kubrick films were screened. The small group that I’m referring to here consists of two short documentary films “Day of the Flight”, and “Flying Padre”; they were both showcased in in 1951. After that he went on the rocky road and filmed his first feature film, “Fear and Desire”, a movie that subtly announced the iconic “Kubrick Stare” we all know now from several of his later movies like “the Clockwork Orange”, “The Shining” and “Full Metal Jacket”.
After “Fear and Desire”, something happened in Kubrick’s plans, and went back to shooting another documentary film, this time it was called “The Seafarers”. Again, the two were projected for the first time in the same year, this time, 1953. But it was in 1955 with “The Killer’s Kiss” that he really kick-started his career as a film director in a professional way.
These particular projects are the ones giving away Kubrick’s fascination (and commitment) with representing truthfulness through his work. This of course is not a particular insight when considering that he worked as a photographer prior to that. The magazines for which he worked gave him quite a broad creative freedom, and he documented a lot of documentary and storytelling projects with his cameras.
