Stanley Kubrick: A Comparison of “The Shining” and “A Clockwork Orange”

Paper by Katharina Martin. Viewed on DVD.

Stanly Kubrick’s The Shining and A Clockwork Orange are both exquisite products of cinema. As director, Stanley Kubrick has a distinguishing background in his field, which has contributed to his revolutionary and unique style. Kubrick has been known to favor unsavory characters and a dark plot, which can be attributed to his cynical view of human behavior. In looking at The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick favors unedited scenes and concentrates more on obtaining a single shot that ends up going a long way. However, in order to see the motives behind each of these works, the history of their creators must be examined.

Stanley Kubrick was born in New York and grew up being shipped across country in an effort to “normalize” his character. What was later to be an asset to Kubrick’s vision was mistaken earlier on as depression. In his early adulthood, he was given a camera, which would eventually lead to a life passion for Kubrick. At seventeen, Kubrick had become a skilled photographer and was offered an apprenticeship at Look Magazine (IMDb). It was photography that was the gateway into film for Kubrick. After six years, he made his first film which was a self-funded documentary called The Day of the Flight. It was not until a few years later that he made his first major motion picture, and it was twenty years after his first movie that he made A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick lived in Europe for a large part of his life, shunning excessive social behavior as a response to his faithlessness in society’s effect on man. The majority of all of Kubrick’s films are adaptations from previous novels and his 1971 controversial masterpiece was no exception. In 1980, Kubrick created yet another screenplay adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson (YourDictionary). These two movies both have their own unique style and can be seen as landmarks of Stanley Kubrick’s directing career.

Stanley Kubrick has a dark style that stems from his own perspective of the world. His perception’s influence can be seen in the performances of his actors, as a product of his directing.  Observation and experience has influenced Kubrick’s thinking and view of the world. In an interview for the New York Times, Kubrick states that his “pessimistic vision of mankind [comes] from observation…knowing what has happened in the world, seeing people around me”. His relative negativity feelings towards society result in him emphasizing some rather uncomfortable innate human qualities in his characters. These can be seen in the main characters Alex and Jack in A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Alex is an unsavory young man who indulges in extreme troublemaking, and Jack is an average father & husband who eventually cracks and tries to kill his whole family.  Kubrick shapes these characters from his ideas of natural human tendencies, and then proceeds to take their personalities to an extreme condition. The resulting impact these characters have on the audience comes from Kubrick’s perception of how someone can easily be warped as a result of his social relations. When asked about his bleak look on humanity he responds that society “…can make man worse than he naturally is” (McGregor).  Kubrick believes that it is inevitable to have some sort of twisted behavior in society because man even in a natural state can be bad. He emphasizes these negative traits in his development of the characters when writing his screenplays. Many see his films as extreme, yet this is exactly the reaction Kubrick is trying to get out of his audience. He wants to enhance the detrimental flaw in his main characters to show how their natural actions and reactions in social situations inevitably cause them to fall victim to insanity.

In 1980, much detail when into Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. Throughout the film, unique shots are used to convey different emotions each character feels at a certain time. An example of this can be seen in the shot of Wendy locking Jack in the pantry. Here, Kubrick has the need of Jack appearing as menacing and insane as possible. He elects to place the camera between Jack’s feet angled up at his face. He then has him bend over the camera to lean against the door, in effect giving a full upward view of his face. This is meant to portray Jack’s final descent into insanity. This unique angle Kubrick chooses emphasizes the intensity of this characters emotional reaction. In Jack’s case, being locked in the pantry drives him even crazier than he already was.

Similarly, in A Clockwork Orange Kubrick uses this angle when Alex is singing in the bathtub after being saved from the rain and near death encounter. The gentleman who takes Alex in also happens to be the one who Alex and his gang crippled several years prior. While raping this gentleman’s wife, Alex joyfully sang “Singing In The Rain”, which is a theme that would be used later again in the movie. Ironically, the house that Alex stumbles across in his search for salvation is the very same one he sabotaged a number of years back. As Alex recovers in the bathtub, he contently begins to belt out “Singing In The Rain” loud enough for his host to hear. At the sound of the tune and memories it stirs up, the gentleman proceeds to have a psychological breakdown. Kubrick utilizes his unique angle at this point, in order to further the audiences’ understanding about just how deep this man’s trauma runs. This upward angle provides so that the screen is covered entirely by the actor. In doing this, the audience is up close and personal with what the emotional state of the character is. Because it is the only image telling the story at the moment, viewers are almost forced to consider what is happening in the characters’ mind. Aside from the initial effect this shot has, it also adds to the connection the audience makes with the characters. In being blatantly exposed to the innermost feelings of a character, the audience gains a personal association towards that character. In a sense, it lets the image of the character build itself from the inside out. This gives the character multiple dimensions that in turn provides for a more fully developed character.

Another technique Kubrick uses is long shots in which the camera does the work. These shots either follow the character from behind or lead them. Countless shots in The Shining are set up this way, some of which occur in the maze. When Wendy and Danny first take a tour of the maze, the camera follows them for the duration of the scene. As they swing around the corners trying to find their way out, the camera and the audience feels right there with them. Likewise, at the end of the movie when Jack is chasing Danny, the audience is right there with him just as terrified as he is. Kubrick cuts this scene between Danny and Jack by using long shots of facing the actors and chasing them. As the screen jumps between following Danny through the maze to Jack menacingly following in pursuit, the realism of the situation is heightened. During the 1980’s, this shot was a revolutionary one of Kubrick’s. Steadicam inventor, Garreth Brown, comments in Kubricks’s style of directing during the production of The Shining.  He states that…”some bizarre theorems were actually tested and a disturbing number of them actually worked”(Brown). Because the steadicam had been around only a year, Kubrick had the advantage of working with a prototype and modifying it to fit his exact needs. The innovation the steadicam represented turned out to be extremely advantageous. By keeping the camera on the same level as the actors rather than at an observer’s point of view, Kubrick effectively draws his audience into a deeper level of connection with the story.

Stanley Kubrick also does this with A Clockwork Orange. Alex is a similar character to Jack in that he has many layers that would be overlooked if not examined carefully. Kubrick uses his technique of a long, uncut shot while following Alex being dragged by his ex-cronies after they discover he has been released from prison. For the entire duration of this scene, the audience only has a perspective from behind the characters. As the camera follows the three characters, nothing more can be derived other than Alex is in some trouble. The audience isn’t told where they are going or what is going to happen, similar to Alex’s perspective. As he is being submerged, Kubrick chooses to fix the camera in one spot and focus on the scene in its entirety. In doing this, the audience feels as though they are realistically present and are watching the scene as they would if they were really observing Alex being tortured. Because Kubrick runs this scene without any cuts, he achieves a sense of realism that is lost in editing. If the image on the screen is constantly changing, the stimulus it produces is dissimilar to people’s normal observation of their surroundings. The benefit of movies is that the story can move through space and time in a way that the audience can grasp the concept of what is going on. Outside the world of film, the perspective people have cannot work like this. Rather, their lives are one constant shot with no other perception besides their own. This is what makes Kubricks’ long shot technique so effective. Kubrick confirms this when asked in an interview for his reasoning on this style. He replies, “I think there should always be a reason for making a cut. If a scene plays well in one camera set up and there is no reason to cut, then I don’t cut. I try to avoid a mechanical cutting rhythm, which dissipates much of the effect of editing” (Ciment). Because what is seen on the screen is similar to how everyday life is observed, it gives what is happening a realistic sense. People are more jarred by their own reactions to what is happening, rather than if they were governed to react through provocative use of editing. Regardless if the camera is moving or still, the advantages of a long shot is putting the audience into the movie with the characters. Although this is not the only technique Kubrick uses to connect to his audience, it is definitely one of the more effective ones.

In the creation of The Shining and A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick masters the method of connecting the story to the audience. As a result of his bleak outlook on human behavior, Kubrick creates questionably stable characters that he effectively shapes into relatable characters. He achieves this mainly through his usage of moving and immobile long shots. Kubrick utilizes several such techniques throughout his films, and as a result has produced an efficient method of realism. In doing this, he became one of the first directors to concentrate on engaging his audience through the use of the camera and actors rather than editing. Although The Shining and A Clockwork Orange are completely different films, several of Kubrick’s techniques are used for the similar purpose of connecting the audience on a higher level. The emotions that he provokes are ones that come from personal observation stemming from an uncut scene. Because these emotions are innate and organic as opposed to manufactured by what the filmmaker wants their audience to feel, it has more impact upon the viewer. Hence, Stanley Kubrick has mastered timeless realistic cinema through his work.

Works Cited

•    “Biography of Stanley Kubrick.” The Internet Movie Database. n.d. Web. November 2010 < http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000040/bio>
•    Brown, Garreth. “The Steadicam – The Shining.” Free Webs. 08 Aug. 1908. Web. 07 Nov. 2010.
•    Ciment, Michel. “Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange.” Visual-memory.co.uk. Web. 07 Nov. 2010.
•    “Stanley Kubrick Biography”. Your Dictonary. Encyclopedia of World Biography. n.d. Web. October 2010.  < http://biography.yourdictionary.com/stanley-kubrick>
•    McGregor, Craig. “Nice Boy from the Bronx?” Clockwork Orange. September 1972. November 2010. <http://malcolminterviews.comlu.com/kubrick1972.html>