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Matinee: 'Stanley Kubrick, Photographer'
16 November 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 578th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Stanley Kubrick, Photographer.
We enjoyed this 3:31 presentation about film director Stanley Kubrick's early interest in still photography. The clip was shared by Jack Perez and features Alex Singer, a schoolfriend and film director himself.
Singer says Kubrick was the son of wealthy person because they had their own home and could have a darkroom. Kubrick's father was interested in photography and did, in fact, build that darkroom where his son learned to develop film and make prints.
"That darkroom background actually was one of the bedrock things that enabled him to develop a very high level of sophistication about photography and then finally cinematography," Singer points out.
Kubrick became the photographer for his high school paper and captured a photo of a news vendor after the death of FDR that Look magazine bought. He was 16 years old.
After graduation he joined Look as a staff photographer. The clip shows a variety of his images.
Singer tells the story of how a still of Walter Cartier, a rising middelweight fighter, led to Kubrick's first film, Day of the Fight (1950). Singer was his assistant.
The clip ends abruptly after that, suggesting to us that it's a cut from a longer work to which no reference is made.