Review: 'Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling'

This year the studio behind such watershed pictures as The Jazz Singer, Gold Diggers of 1933, Casablanca, White Heat, Bonnie and Clyde, A Clockwork Orange, Superman, and Malcolm X turns 100. Mark A. Vieira marks the event with an illustrated history of the studio called Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling. 

Review: 'Kubrick’s Music—Selections from the Films of Stanley Kubrick'

Stanley Kubrick’s work is often more like world’s you visit than movies you watch. The galactic emptiness of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The grimy yet candy-colored near-future dystopia of A Clockwork Orange. The cavernous, ice-encrusted hotel of The Shining. The opulent dream vision of NYC in Eyes Wide Shut. The oil painting landscapes and chiaroscuro interiors of Barry Lyndon. Even the desolate suburbs of Lolita are inhabitable environments that engulf you, shutting out any trace of our real world for two or three hours. Kubrick put an absurd amount of thought into how to best create these fully dimensional worlds visually, but he put a great deal of thought into the sounds swirling between their borders as well. He’d spend hour upon hour researching music, and the fruits of his labors are clear to anyone who cannot separate the visuals of great spacecraft tumbling through the cosmos without hearing “The Blue Danube Waltz” or a tiny car traversing a treacherous path swarmed by foreboding forests without hearing Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s “Dies Irae”.

Much of the music to which Kubrick bestowed additional dimensions can be heard on El Records’ Kubrick’s Music—Selections from the Films of Stanley Kubrick. This set is both fascinating and frustrating. It is frustrating because so many essentials are not present. The Shining’s sprawling soundtrack is largely reduced to the jazz-age tracks Kubrick used to stir the ghosts of the Overlook’s bloody past. “Dies Irae” only appears within Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”, a stirring piece of bombast far removed from The Shining’s brooding tone. Carlos and Elkind’s chilling synth production is not present. The same is true of the synthesized music from A Clockwork Orange: the pieces only appear in traditionally orchestrated versions. While we get an eerie prelude by Ralph Vaughan Williams that Kubrick considered using in the stargate sequence of 2001, we do not get the more transformative and disturbing Ligeti piece he ultimately used in the film. While pop songs are present in the use of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” (Dr. Strangelove), Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” (A Clockwork Orange), and a non-soundtrack song Sue Lyon sang on the B-side of the “Lolita Ya-Ya” single, none of the great pop songs used in Full Metal Jacket appear. In fact, that film, as well as Killer’s Kiss and The Killing, is completely unrepresented.

However, some of these issues also point to one of the more fascinating aspects of Kubrick’s Music since we get to hear much of what inspired Kubrick to use the music he ultimately used, and the inclusion of discarded ideas such as the Ralph Vaughan Williams prelude makes Kubrick’s Music a sort of enlightening look at Kubrick’s musical sketchpad. So while this is hardly a definitive collection of Kubrick soundtracks, it is an educational one, and with such great pieces as John Coltrane’s “Greensleeves”, Nelson Riddle’s “Lolita Ya Ya”,  Rimskey-Korsokav’s “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” (incidentally, a piece shut out of the original Clockwork Orange soundtrack), and several movements from Ludwig Van’s glorious “Ninth”, there is quite a lot of gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh to slooshy, o my brothers.

Review: 'Stanley Kubrick and Me'

In late 1970, a former formula-one race car driver and current minicab driver received an assignment to deliver a large porcelain phallus to a movie set in Thamesmead. The driver was Emilio D’Alessandro. The sculpture would end up being used by Malcolm McDowell as a murder weapon in A Clockwork Orange. The film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, would end up hiring D’Alessandro as his driver. Despite strict British Union rules, that job also entailed being Kubrick’s personal maid, librarian, TV repairman, deliveryman, shopper, translator (for conversations with Federico Fellini!), veterinarian, dog groomer, tour guide for when his parents were in town, condom smuggler, and defender against everyone who believed the myths that Kubrick was a tyrant or a whack job.

Eighteen years after Kubrick’s death, Emilio D’Alessandro continues to serve in that latter role with his new memoir Stanley Kubrick and Me. Kubrick’s infamously demanding nature is on full display in this book, and D’Alessandro is frank about the strain his 24-hour-a-day work schedule put on his own marriage, but the author never has an unkind word to say about the legendary filmmaker. Consequently, Stanley Kubrick and Me serves a valuable function in the already massive Kubrick bibliography by truly humanizing the legend. Through D’Alessandro’s stories we learn of Kubrick’s tendency to be scatterbrained despite his reputation for being robotically methodical, helpless despite his reputation for being in complete control of his work, and utterly dependent on fellow humans despite his reputation for making chilly films about dehumanization. We get a very intimate look at Kubrick’s love for animals, and the only thing that really makes him lose his shit is when something goes wrong with one of his many pets. We learn of his extreme generosity, such as when he offers to care for D’Alessandro’s children after the driver’s wife loses her father and falls ill. We also learn about the limitations of Kubrick’s thoughtfulness. He calls D’Alessandro at all hours of the day for assistance and is baffled when another employee quits because of the job’s demands. Kubrick assumed that everyone was as devoted to work as he was. He could also be a real pain in the ass to his wife and daughters and possessed a wealth of quirks. D’Alessandro confirms the rumors that Kubrick was paranoid about journalists leaking his ideas and other filmmakers (such as Federico Fellini!) stealing them. Kubrick thought it strange that D’Alessandro wasn’t related to Francis Ford Coppola since they are both Italian. He was an incorrigible pack rat and a massive Danny DeVito fan. Kubrick’s love for and dependence on the author is also on full display and it makes for some truly touching moments.

With the assistance of writer Fillippo Uliovieri, D’Alessandro tells his stories without an ounce of pretension, and the charming, regular-guy simplicity of the storytelling further emphasizes the main thrust of Stanley Kubrick and Me: Kubrick was extraordinary in multitudinous ways, but when it comes down to it, he was still pretty down-to-earth and a real, flesh-and-blood human being.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 183

The Date: March 31

The Movie: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

What Is It?: Stanley Kubrick films the unfilmable, but in a much different way than he did with Lolita or 2001. Kubrick makes a profound statement about the morality of extreme versions of punishment by introducing the world to one of cinema’s most grotesquely immoral characters. Malcolm McDowell plays him with so much charm that you’ll feel really icky for enjoying his company.

Why Today?: On this day in 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code is established. 41 years later, it slapped an X on A Clockwork Orange. Deserved or undeserved? Feel free to debate below.