Scenes Like Paintings Stanley Kubrick s

7/24/2019 Scenes Like Paintings Stanley Kubrick s

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Scenes like a paintings Kubricks sense of art in

arry Lyndon

Suspension of disbelief, ideas geometry, and the 1700s as no one has ever seen before: Barry

Lyndonis not only one of the summits of New Yorker directors career, and neither one of

the milestones of entire history of cinema. The movie seems rather one of the most

important and meaningful works of art of the 20thcentury, where intersecting medium-late

English and European painting of 1700s, British literature of 1800s, experimental

photography and cinema. A phylum- starting to canvases by Thomas Gainsborough, William

Hogarth, George Stubbs, ntoine Watteau, to get to the works by Johann Joseph Zoffany,

John ConstableeJohann Heinrich Fssli,passing through the literary filter of The Luck of

Barry Lyndonby William Makepeace Thackeray and an original use of photographic medium

- that caused the myth for which in Barry Lyndonthe shots would be imitations of classical

paintings. After a screening of the film at Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science,

associate producer Bernard Williamsclaimed: We used to copy from paintings in terms of

light and characters placement. If you look at the movie, you will see that every scene looks

like a painting.

George Stubbs, Eclipse, 1769 - Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon, 1975

The director accumulated a very large picture file of drawings and paintings taken from art

books. These pictures served as the reference for everything we needed to make - clothes,

furniture, hand props, architecture, vehicles, etc. As Williams notes: Stanley I told him

we need the agenda for tomorrow. And he: Get out all the paintings. Faced with the

enormous collection and after having given them thorough consideration, he usual

repeating: Maybe that I do it tomorrow and even the other one too. Get them ready

everyone. The filmmaker used to engage conversations about 1700s painting with the

artistic director Ken damand costume designer Milena Canonero. His desire was to open

a window onto the past for transporting the audience directly in the dimension of time. A

kind of stargatein which portraits by Gainsborough and Joshua Reynoldsserved as a model


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for study people physiognomy, their customs and practices and the way to relate to the

surrounding world; while Hogarths seriesMarriage -la-mode- a sequences of six pictures

painted between 1743 and 1745 depicting a pointed skewering of upper class 18th century

society have provided many details about aesthetic.

Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs William Hallett, 1785


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Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon, 1975

Despite this, nobody's ever been able to find in Barry Lyndon an example of straight

imitation. However, this does not mean that are missing the references to the painting and,

more generally, to an iconography typical of Age of the Enlightenment. Judging by result,Barry Lyndon, than a movie embedded with citations, appears like a series of tableaux vivants

one byone, from formal perfection of initial frame to final sequence, where Lord Bullington,

back at home, stay close his blankly mother while shessigning the annual payment in favour

of ex-husband. The basic view concerning the making of the film exists within a statement

contained in aseries of three interviewsthat director gave to French critic Michel Ciment. In

relation to his 10thfeature film, Kubrick declared: Barry Lyndonalso offered the opportunity

to do one of the things that movies can do better than any other art form, and that is to

present historical subject matter. Description is not one of the things that novels do best butit is something that movies do effortlessly, at least with respect to the effort required of the

audience.
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.htmlhttp://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.htmlhttp://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.htmlhttp://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.html


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John Constable, Malvern Hall,1809



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William Hogarth, Marriage -la-mode: 2. The Tte Tte, 1743



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Johann Heinrich Fssli, The Nightmare, 1781



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Kubrick revealed that has not used the storyboard when the picture was made, suggesting

that are very few the scenes and camera movements planned before. When you rehearse a

scene, it is usually best not to think about the camera at all. If you do, I have found that it

invariably interferes with the fullest exploration of the ideas of the scene. When, at last,

something happens which you know is worth filming, that is the time to decide how to shoot

it. Kubricks willingness is to dig deep human conditionthrough one of its most significant

manifestation: its representation. To paraphrase olden haikumaster Matsuo Basho, Kubrick

didnt try to follow the footsteps of ancients. He searched what they searching too. With

camera instead of paintbrush. Kubrick and his cinematographer John lcottfilmed both of

interiors and of exteriors without recourse to electric light candlelight at most in the

1700s painters zeitgeist, not only as a framework composition, but also in the choice of

colors, intentionally such as the fresco painting.

The perseverate obsessively and repeatedly in the construction of backgrounds and

situations that the director showing in Barry Lyndon is a process that owes a lot to the

Luchino Viscontis M.O., both as regards his approach purely philological and his

determination to use evocative potential of art not only for figurative purposes. Through the

wealth of formal elements and the aesthetic value of pictures, Stanley Kubrick demonstrates

that the painting can have the function of conscientious objector for the viewer, driving

his direction like HAL in 2001: A Space Odissey.


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Johann Joseph Zoffany, The Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1772-78


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Scenes Like Paintings Stanley Kubrick s