Fulfills COAS A & H distribution requirement

Stanley Kubrick, who died in 1999, was a paradoxical figure. One of
the few mainstream directors of the past fifty years who was both
popular and respected by intellectuals, he maintained a good
relationship with movie studios and remarkable degree of personal
control over his most expensive projects. His pictures seemed both
hand-made and technically sophisticated, and despite his apparent
eccentricity and iconoclasm, he became a valuable show-business
commodity. From the 1960s onward, he lived in exile from both
Hollywood and America, creating visions of US space travel, the
Vietnam War, and New York City, all within a few miles of his
English country home. The long periods between his later projects,
which were shrouded in secrecy, created great public curiosity about
what he would do next, simply because he was responsible for some of
the most admired movies ever made.

This course will offer a retrospective view of Kubrick's career,
covering all but one of the feature films he signed. At regularly
scheduled film showings, we will see Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss,
The Killing, Paths of Glory, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space
Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal
Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. We will also view the
posthumous “collaboration” between Kubrick and Steven Spielberg on
A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The lectures and discussions will
treat these films from a variety of perspectives, dealing with
style, ideas, politics, social and industrial history, movie
technology, production methods, techniques of adaptation, and public
reception.

Texts for the course will include one novel (Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita), an encyclopedic reference book on Kubrick, and a set of
critical readings on e-reserve. All students are expected to
regularly attend the class and film showings, and to participate in
discussions. Grades are based on a series of written assignments: a
two-page essay, a seven to eight-page essay, and two exams
consisting of short-answer identifications and essay questions.