Stanley Kubrick had already acquired his reputation as a perfectionist by directing works such as Spartacus, Lolita and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. All possibilities appeared open to the filmmaker following the release of his 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Read more:Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey: still cult after 50 years
The next film he planned to direct was on the legendary ruler Napoleon.
Kubrick didn't want to simply focus on a certain period of Napoleon's life, but rather portray his "entire" life, including ambitious battle scenes with thousands of extras — a definitely megalomaniac project.
The book Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon. The Greatest Movie Never Made, published by Taschen, details how much energy Kubrick had dedicated to researching and preparing his film.
While the book is about a film that was finally never made, there is certainly more pre-production material documenting it than most movies that were actually produced.
Publisher Alison Castle started researching the book in 2002, and was surprised to discover the rich Napoleon pre-production archives available at the Kubrick estate.
Costumes had already been planned in detail: a page from the Taschen book
The over 800-page-long book covers different aspects of the director's preparatory work in various sections — Script, Reference, Notes, Correspondence, Chronology, Production, Text, Costumes, Location Scouting and Picture File.
Kubrick wanted to shoot most of his film in Romania, with thousands of actual Romanian soldiers. Since the director knew that Napoleon would be a difficult project to finance, he avoided casting top stars. Among the people he was in touch with for the lead role were solid actors, including Ian Holm and Oskar Werner, as well as Jack Nicholson, whose fame at the time was restricted to his anti-hero role in the counter-culture film Easy Rider.
Napoleon's last residence, the Château de Malmaison, was another planned film location
It would have been a film on human folly
Kubrick wanted to highlight Napoleon's megalomania, a trait in some ways shared by the director, and one that certainly fascinated him. Even though he had already touched a wide variety of topics and genres, all his films had one thing in common, pointed out Jan Harlan, Kubrick's executive producer on his last four films: Kubrick's "never-ending interest in observing human folly was the well-spring of nearly all his films," he wrote in the book.
The film was never produced. The two studios Kubrick had brought his project to, MGM and then United Artists, got cold feet. Historical epics were perceived as too much of a financial risk at the time.
The book on Kubrick's Napoleon is a monumental work in itself
Stanley Kubrick was disappointed and depressed. That however didn't damage his career. His following project, A Clockwork Orange, was produced relatively quickly by his standards.
He also managed to direct a monumental historical film, Barry Lyndon, that came out in 1975. The special cinematography technology he famously had developed to capture candlelit scenes in this work had originally been planned for Napoleon.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Philosophical science-fiction
This is one of the films in cinema history that has been written about the most. Kubrick's masterpiece was analyzed by film critics, cultural scientists and philosophers. Fifty years after its premiere, the German Film Museum in Frankfurt is dedicating an exhibition to the film. "Kubrick's 2001. 50 Years A Space Odyssey" showcases many original exhibits from the Stanley Kubrick Archive.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Reflections on humanity
What makes us human? This is just one of the many questions director Stanley Kubrick dealt with in his 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." When a computer takes over the control of a spaceship, astronauts appear helpless, despite their protective helmets and spacesuits.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
The unforgettable opening sequence
Composed of three major segments, the epic science-fiction drama opens with the prologue "The Dawn of Man," set in an African desert millions of years ago. A tribe of hominids discover a mysterious black monolith. They then start using bones as weapons, accompanied by Richard Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Film history's most famous match cut
The sequence is followed by a cut that has become legendary among film experts and fans alike. The bone used by the ape to kill another one is thrown into the air; it switches to a similarly shaped satellite orbiting in space — four million years later.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Destination Jupiter
The main segment of the film, entitled "Jupiter Mission," depicts the mission of the spacecraft Discovery One. Two pilots and three scientists in suspended animation are on their way to Jupiter. The ship's computer, HAL, controls the spacecraft.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
A classified mission
The astronauts do not know much about the goals of their journey. HAL is the only one who's been informed of the mission's true objectives. They are headed to Jupiter, where the enigmatic monolith is based. It is believed to a be tool created by aliens.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Spectacular scenery
The main segment of "2001: A Space Odyssey" showcased visuals unlike anything moviegoers had seen in 1968, and they would rarely be surpassed in later works. The outer space scenes were directed to appear extremely realistic; Kubrick worked with NASA and other companies to achieve this.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Humans and computer
The two pilots, portrayed by Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea, fatally confront the supercomputer HAL, which turns out to be the actual captain on board. The astronauts' every movement and conversation is followed by the computer. The power of artificial intelligence was a central and pioneering theme in "2001."
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
Breathtaking images
"I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content," Kubrick once said in a Playboy magazine interview. His aesthetic concept attracted viewers and critics alike.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
A visual trip
In the third segment of the film, "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," Kubrick ignited a psychedelic firework of images that some people in 1968 interpreted as an acid trip. The final scene is set in a mysterious white room, where death and birth meet — a symbol for the eternal cycle of life.
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Revisiting Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'
The magician: Stanley Kubrick
The filmmaker born in New York directed many of his most famous films in the UK. When his pioneering epic "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out in 1968, Kubrick was 40 years old. This masterpiece and many more ground-breaking works make him one of the most influential directors in cinematic history.
Author: Jochen Kürten (eg)