Film Contributions Of The Sixties
Beginning roughly with the release of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb in 1964, and continuing for about the next decade, the “Sixties” era of filmmaking made many lasting impressions on the motion picture industry. Although editing and pacing styles varied greatly from Martin Scorcesse’s hyperactive pace, to Kubrick’s slow methodical pace, there were many uniform contributions made by some of the era’s seminal directors. In particular, the “Sixties” saw the return of the auteur, as people like Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick wrote and directed their own screenplays, while Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in his own films. Kubrick, Coppola and Allen each experimented with characterization, narrative and editing techniques. By examining the major works of these important directors, their contributions become more apparent.
Dr. Strangelove (1964), an adaptation of Peter Bryant’s novel Red Alert, although still bearing the usual traits of a Kubrick film, is something of a departure for him in terms of editing and spatial strategies. The film’s run-time more or less corresponds with the fictional or represented time in the story. This direct correspondence between fictional and real time adds to the sense of temporal compression induced by the film’s insistent editing patterns. Although Dr. Strangelove employs many long takes, it contains the shortest average-shot-length of any Kubrick film. The film consists of roughly 700 shots and has a run time of 94 minutes for an average-shot-length of 8 seconds. Despite the rather short average-shot-length, Dr. Strangelove still resorts to crucial long takes to slow down the rapid momentum of the story (Falsetto, 35).
Several spatial and temporal procedures are at work in Dr. Strangelove, such as the use of the long take. Conversely, the B-52 sequences, often accompanied by various versions of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” employ different editing patterns than the rest of the film. These edits reinforce the film’s theme of inevitability. Through editing, the B-52 sequences display a strong cinematic rhythm. The shots are generally shorter than the other sections of the film, and they significantly contribute to the film’s shorter average-shot-length, despite Kubrick’s deliberate use of long takes (Falsetto, 44).
Stanley Kubrick’s next film was the science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 represents Kubrick’s most ambitious presentation of cinematic subjectivity, most prominently in the Star-Gate sequence and in the final episode of Dave Bowman in an isolation room. These sequences are a result of a film, which for most of its run time does not presented the subjective vision of any one character. In stylistic and visual terms, there is a movement from the three-dimensional style of the film’s first half to the flatter, more abstract visual style of the Star-Gate sequence. The film’s movement towards abstraction can be understood both in visual and narrative terms (Falsetto, 115).
2001’s presentation of details from the “Dawn of Man” sequence, to later space travel scenes are shot with complete conviction and impeccable detail. The viewer believes that the world might have actually looked like what Kubrick presented it as, several million years ago, and the depiction of space travel is just as convincing. The use of models, front projection, the slow editing techniques and camera work all help to create a more complete illusion (Falsetto, 141).
If 2001 was presented almost completely objectively, than Kubrick’s next film, A Clockwork Orange (1972) was presented almost completely subjectively. This may have been in part due to the constraints of the original novel by William Burgess, but nonetheless the film is told from the point of view of its central character, Alex. When Alex is not speaking on camera, he can often be heard as a voiced over narrator, interjecting his comments on the action which is occurring on screen.
The elements of fantasy and theater are evident in the infamous rape scene, where Alex does a freaked-out impersonation of Gene Kelly, performing “Singing in the Rain.” He moves with great flair, and his violent actions become a creative release. Carefully choreographed movements and gestures punctuate his actions. Part of the reason the film’s violence is so attractive is because not only is it presented with great imagination, but it is also performed by the only
