Kubrick’s last whisper about music came in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and it is a personal stamp that is undeniably his. In addition to having thousands of drawings made for the film, and working with numerous people on a screenplay, Kubrick had chosen a piece of music that he wanted to appear in the film, a waltz from Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier. In an interview on one of the DVD extras for A.I. Artificial Intelligence, composer John Williams mentions honoring Kubrick’s request:
Incidentally, this quotation of Richard Strauss was the one piece of music that Stanley Kubrick requested that Steven leave in the film. We don’t know why. The waltz . . . was the one thing he stipulated. It should be that melody from Richard Strauss in some area. Very difficult for me to find a place where it fit, but there’s a section for about thirty seconds where they drive through those great faces, you know, across the bridge into Rouge City, where on top of my own music, I threaded the waltz theme from Rosenkavalier as an homage to Kubrick completely without fully realizing what the connection in his mind was.
There is a sense of majesty, of grandness to the waltz. There is also a sense of movement, because it is a waltz, a dance. Kubrick was fond of waltzes, using them in Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Eyes Wide Shut.
The thirty seconds of Strauss’s majestic waltz was Kubrick’s last chosen piece, but the musical influence he had on filmmakers in general, even those too young to have seen one of Kubrick’s films first-run in a theater, is strong. Filmmakers and musicologists will continue to look to his films for inspiration, and we will continue to talk about what we see and hear for decades to come. In speaking about the waltz in A.I., Jan Harlan could have been talking about Kubrick’s musical sensibility in films as it continues to live on in new filmmakers: “Listen very carefully,” he says. “It’s there.”
Notes
1. James Howard, Stanley Kubrick Companion (London: B.T. Batsford, 1999), 176.
2. Michel Ciment, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, trans. Gilbert Adair (New York: Faber and Faber, 1999), 258.
3. Howard, Stanley Kubrick Companion, 177.
4. Michel Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, trans. Trista Selous (London: British Film Institute, 2002), 16.
5. Hans-Thies Lehmann, “Film/Theatre: Masks/Identities in Eyes Wide Shut,” in Stanley Kubrick Guide (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum), 235.
6. According to executive producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, Kubrick purchased the rights to Traumnovelle in 1970 (interview with author).
7. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 13.
8. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 17.
9. Baxter was the other one. Nick James, “At Home with the Kubricks,” Sight and Sound 9, no. 9 (September 1999): 12–18.
10. See Lorenzo Bellettini, “Freud’s Contribution to Arthur Schnitzler’s Prose Style,” Rocky Mountain E-Review of Language and Literature 61, no. 2., http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/61.2/articles/bellettini.asp.
11. For a detailed account of Ophüls and Kubrick see Katherine McQuiston’s forthcoming title with Oxford University Press.
12. Susan B. White, The Cinema of Max Ophuls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure of Woman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 239.
13. White, The Cinema of Max Ophuls, 240. This is White’s translation from the script of the film.
14. David Thomson suggested that Kubrick should have had Kidman portray every female role in Eyes Wide Shut, “so that Tom Cruise can’t help seeing her everywhere.” Quoted in Patrick Webster, Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita through Eyes Wide Shut (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, Inc. 2011), 150.
15. Ben Brantley, review of Blue Room, New York Times, December 14, 1998, http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?html_title=&tols_title=BLUE+ROOM,+THE+(PLAY)&pdate=19981214&byline=By+BEN+BRANTLEY&id=1077011432284.
16. There are some variations in the spelling of these names in different translations.
17. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “In Dream Begin Responsibilities,” in Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film and the Uses of History, ed. Geoffrey Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 249.
18. James Naremore, On Kubrick (London: British Film Institute, 2007), 240.
19. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 21.
20. Naremore, On Kubrick, 228.
21. Arthur Schnitzler, Night Games and Other Stories and Novellas, trans. Margaret Schaefer (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 220.
22. Schnitzler, Night Games, 221–222.
23. Frederic Raphael, Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 59.
24. Naremore, On Kubrick, 227.
25. Naremore, On Kubrick, 227.
26. Cocks, Wolf at the Door, 146.
27. Naremore, On Kubrick, 276.
28. Webster, Love and Death in Kubrick, 161–162.
29. Howard, Stanley Kubrick Companion, 179.
30. Terry Southern, Blue Movie (New York: Grove Press, 1970), 15. Emphasis original.
31. Ciarán Crilly, “The Bigger Picture: Ligeti’s Music and the Films of Stanley Kubrick,” in György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds, ed. Louise Duschesneau and Wolfgang Marx, 245–254 (Woodbridge: Bydell Press, 2011), 250.
32. Claudia Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open: Kubrick’s Music,” in Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-Existing Music in Film, ed. Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell, 3–18. Nurlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.
33. Letter from Ajay Shah Convenor to Warner Bros, August 3, 1999, http://www.hindunet.org/anti_defamation/eyes/newpage1.htm.
34. Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 14.
35. Wagner, in addition to being a composer of epic operas, was also an unapologetic anti-Semite. Although Wagner died in 1883, his music of course lived on and became a favorite of Hitler and the Third Reich. Wagner’s importance as a composer is sometimes obscured by these historical facts.
36. Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner: Volume II, 1848–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 526.
37. Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 541.
38. Interview with Harlan, April 20, 2011.
39. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 33–34. Also pointed out in Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 15.
40. Note 6, chapter 5 of Ian MacDonald, The New Shostakovich, new edition updated by Raymond Clarke (London: Pimlico, 2006), 401.
41. Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 113.
42. See Randolph Jordan, “The Mask That Conceals Nothing: On the Concepts of Marital Fidelity and the Lo-Fi Soundscape in Eyes Wide Shut,” in Stanley Kubrick: Essays on His Films and Legacy, ed. Gary D. Rhodes (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 157–169.
43. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 21.
44. Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 8.
45. Mike Zwerin, “Kubrick’s Approval Sets Seal on Classical Crossover Success: Pooks Unique Musical Mix,” New York Times, 27 Ocober 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/27/style/27iht-pook.t.html.
46. Jeff Bond, “Once in a Lifetime,” Film Score Monthly 4, no. 8 (September/October 1999): 25.
47. “Jocelyn Pook on Eyes Wide Shut,” interview with Rudy Koppl, Soundtrack: Cinemascore and Soundtrack Archives, http://www.runmovies.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=311&Itemid=57.
48. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 33.
49. “Jocelyn Pook on Eyes Wide Shut.”
50. Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 14.
51. Jordan, “The Mask That Conceals Nothing,” 166.
52. “Jocelyn Pook on Eyes Wide Shut.”
53. “Jocelyn Pook on Eyes Wide Shut.”
54. Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 16.
55. Norman Kagan, The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick, 3rd ed. (New York: Continuum, 2000), 243.
56. Ciment, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, 261.
57. Paul Griffiths, “György Ligeti,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 690.
&
nbsp; 58. Crilly, “The Bigger Picture,” 251.
59. Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 12.
60. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 33.
61. Gorbman, “Ears Wide Open,” 11.
62. Count Franz Walsegg was the mysterious man in question. He kept his identity a secret because he likely wanted to pass the completed Requiem off as his own composition.
63. Ben Arnold, “Piano Music: 1861–1886,” in The Liszt Companion, ed. Ben Arnold (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 140.
64. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: Volume Three, The Final Years 1861–1886 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 403.
65. Leonard Ratner, Romantic Music: Sound and Syntax (New York: Schirmer, 1992), 267.
66. Schnitzler, Night Games, 269.
67. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 25.
68. Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, 17.
69. Ciment, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, 258. “At a time when many contemporary artists are regularly praised in the media for repeating themselves, even Kubrick’s final work failed to generate anything like critical agreement. It is the surest sign that Stanley Kubrick is more alive than ever.” Emphasis original.
70. Interview with Philip Strick and Penelope Houston, 1972, in Stanley Kubrick Interviews, ed. Gene D. Phillips, 126–139 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001).
Appendix A
Films and Their Source Material
The Killing: Clean Break by Lionel White
Paths of Glory: Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb
Lolita: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Dr. Strangelove: Red Alert by Peter George
A Clockwork Orange: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Barry Lyndon: The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Shining: The Shining by Stephen King
Full Metal Jacket: The Short-Timers by Gus Hasford
Eyes Wide Shut: Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler
Unmade Projects
Napoleon project: Napoleon by Felix Markham
Aryan Papers: Wartime Lies by Louis Begley
A.I.: Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss
For a full rendering of all Kubrick’s unmade projects see appendix 12 in Patrick Webster’s Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita through Eyes Wide Shut (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 243–246.
Appendix B
Film Synopses
2001: A Space Odyssey
At the dawn of humankind, a group of apelike creatures try to survive in the harsh African desert. Fearful of wild animals, they also compete with another group of hominids for control of a small watering hole. Driven away from the watering hole, one group spends the night among some rocks. When they wake up, they see a large black rectangular stone. They cautiously venture out and touch it. Soon after, one of these apelike creatures discovers that a bone can be used as a weapon. Killing a tapir and eating its flesh, the group grows strong. Back at the watering hole, one of the apelike creatures bludgeons a member of the other group with the bone weapon. As he throws the bone up in the air in triumph, we cut to an orbiting satellite, far in the future.
Dr. Heywood Floyd is traveling to the Clavius moon base, but first he has a brief layover on an orbiting space station. There, he makes a video phone call to his daughter and runs into some Russian scientists on their way back to Earth. When the scientists ask Dr. Floyd about rumors of an epidemic at the moon base, Dr. Floyd does not share any information. Once at Clavius, Floyd tells base personnel that he is there to investigate an artifact that appears to have been buried on the moon millions of years ago. Floyd takes a team down to the object, called Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One (TMA-1), and when there, a very loud radio signal is emitted from the object.
Eighteen months later, the spaceship Discovery is on its way to Jupiter. There are two astronauts awake on board, Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole (three other astronauts are in hibernation). They are aided in their daily duties by HAL, a computer that speaks to them in a human voice. HAL predicts the malfunction of Discovery’s main antenna, but the astronauts examine the antenna and find no problem with it. Bowman and Poole ask mission control what to do, since HAL is supposed to be “incapable of error.” The astronauts on board discuss possibly deactivating HAL if he proves to be wrong. They hold their discussion in an EVA pod to keep HAL from hearing them, but he reads their lips.
While Poole is out of the ship to reattach the antenna, HAL disconnects Poole’s oxygen hose, killing him. Dave, unaware that HAL is responsible, uses one of the pods to attempt a rescue. While Dave is outside of Discovery, HAL terminates the life functions of the hibernating astronauts. Upon his return to the ship, Dave is refused entry by HAL. Although he has no helmet, Dave uses manual controls to get himself back onto the ship. He begins to disconnect HAL. The computer seems to experience something like fear as Dave disconnects his memory circuits. HAL’s disconnection triggers a pre-recorded message from Dr. Floyd. Floyd explains the discovery of the monolith on the moon and that its only communication was sending a radio signal to Jupiter. It is still unknown why.
Dave leaves Discovery in a pod, encountering a monolith in orbit around Jupiter. He enters into some kind of space tunnel, traveling at an impossibly fast speed, ending up in a Louis XVI–style bedroom where he watches himself age until he is reborn—a Starchild—watching over the Earth.
A Clockwork Orange
Alex, a teenager, and his three friends drink drugged milk at the Korova Milkbar while they decide what to do with the evening. Their activities will consist of what Alex likes to call “ultra-violence.” They attack an old homeless man, have a fight with a rival gang, steal a car, and arrive at a place called HOME. At HOME, the group vandalizes the property, destroying the writings of the man who lives there. Alex performs a rendition of “Singing in the Rain” while cutting off the clothes of the man’s wife before forcing the man to watch as they sexually assault her.
Returning to the milk bar where they began the evening, the group hears a woman singing the main theme from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. When one friend ridicules the woman, Alex punishes him for being uncivilized. The episode seems to cause some tension within the group, but nothing comes of it, and they all return to their homes. Alex ends his night by listening to classical music and imagining violent acts.
The next morning, Alex—who has stayed home from school—receives a visit from the truancy officer who cautions Alex to change his ways. Alex then goes to the record shop to pick up an album that he has ordered. While there, he meets two young women whom he takes home and seduces. As evening falls, Alex meets up with his friends, and one of them questions Alex’s authority. To reassert his place as the alpha male, Alex starts a physical fight with his friends. Afterward, Alex and his injured friends have a drink at a bar where Georgie suggests they rob the house of an old woman. Thinking he is a magnanimous leader, Alex agrees with the plan.
The robbery is merely a setup so Alex will be caught by police. Before the police arrive, however, Alex attacks the woman of the house with a sculpture; she dies from her injuries. Deserted by his friends and arrested, Alex arrives at the state jail. Working in the prison chapel, Alex indulges in violent fantasies based on biblical stories. He asks the prison chaplain about a rumored experimental treatment that would commute his sentence. The chaplain expresses dismay that the treatment takes away one’s free will.
The Minister of the Interior visits the prison, choosing Alex for the experimental treatment. At the Ludovico center, Alex is given injections and forced to watch violent films. The films begin to make him feel sick. In the next session, Alex notices the soundtrack for the films is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; he protests the use of music in this way. Alex completes the treatment.
Alex is subjected to humiliation to prove his docility. Satisfied, the minister releases him. He returns home to find his parents have taken in a boarder. With nowhere to go, Alex walks the streets. He runs into the homeless man
his gang attacked earlier in the film, and the man attacks Alex and soon others join in. The thought of violence makes Alex sick, so he is unable to defend himself. When the police arrive, Alex believes he has been saved, only to find that the police officers are two of his former friends. They take him into the countryside, beat him, and leave him for dead.
Alex wanders to the closest house, which is HOME. Because Alex wore a mask during the earlier attack, his former victim doesn’t recognize him right away, but Alex unintentionally gives himself away. The man, F. Alexander—an outspoken critic of the government—decides to use Alex to further his cause. A woman comes to interview Alex, and he reveals that the Ninth Symphony has become unbearable to him. F. Alexander drugs Alex, waking him up to the sound of Beethoven. Sickened by the sound and unable to stop it, Alex attempts suicide.
While unconscious, Alex is de-conditioned. He has no memory of this except for vague dreams. A doctor tests his de-conditioning, finding that it has been successful. The Minister of the Interior visits Alex for a photo-op, presenting him with a stereo as a gesture of goodwill. When he hears it the Ninth Symphony, he lapses into fantasies, proclaiming himself cured.
Barry Lyndon
Young Irishman Redmond Barry is in love with his cousin, Nora. She plans to marry Captain John Quin, an English soldier. Challenging Quin to a duel, Redmond shoots his rival and is forced to go to Dublin. Given some money from his widowed mother, Redmond is robbed by highwayman Captain Feeney. He joins the English army, running into old friend Captain Grogan, who informs Redmond that he didn’t actually kill John Quin. Redmond’s pistol was filled with tow by Nora’s family so that Redmond would leave and Nora would be free to marry Quin.
Redmond’s regiment fights a small battle in the Seven Years’ War, but Grogan is fatally wounded. Redmond is soured on the service and escapes the army by stealing the horse, uniform, and papers of an officer. Making his way to Holland, he stays for a time with a German girl, but then moves on. He runs into Captain Potzdorf of the Prussian army. Potzdorf knows Redmond is an impostor, and he gives Redmond a choice: go back to the British army (where he will likely be executed for desertion) or join the Prussian army. Redmond chooses the latter and serves under Potzdorf, saving his commander’s life, earning both the man’s trust and a commendation.
Listening to Stanley Kubrick Page 34
