Film Studies Lecture: Kubrick and History

Tutor: Dr Sheldon Hall

Costume dramas and science fiction alike tend to have a low reputation for physical authenticity and literary eloquence, but many critics make an exception for Kubrick’s. The director himself disowned Spartacus (1960), the only film on which he did not have total artistic control, but it’s one of the few sword-and-sandal epics to be taken seriously even by the genre’s detractors. No blockbuster is more highly regarded than 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a ten-million-dollar art movie which spans the whole of human history. And though once widely seen as a noble failure, Barry Lyndon (1975) has been positively re-evaluated as a masterpiece. Along with his most notable unmade projects, a biopic of Napoleon and the fantasy parable that became Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), these large-scale films see Kubrick exploring fresh ways to recreate the past or envision the future.

Presented in association with Sheffield Hallam University.

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