Highest Rated: 100% Kubrick by Kubrick (Kubrick par Kubrick) (2020)

Lowest Rated: 75% Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Birthday: Jul 26, 1928

Birthplace: New York City, NY

As one of the most universally acclaimed and influential directors of the postwar era, Stanley Kubrick enjoyed a reputation and a standing unique among the filmmakers of his day. A perennial outsider, he worked far beyond the confines of Hollywood, maintaining complete artistic control and making movies according to the whims and time constraints of no one but himself, but with the rare advantage of studio financial support for all of his endeavors. Working in a vast range of styles and genres spanning from black comedy to horror to crime drama, Kubrick was an enigma, living and creating in almost total seclusion, far away from the watchful eye of the media. His films were a reflection of his obsessive nature, perfectionist masterpieces which remain among the most provocative and visionary motion pictures ever made. Born July 26, 1928 in New York City, Kubrick initially earned renown as a photographer, selling his first free-lance pictures to Look magazine while still in high school. By the age of 17 he was working as a Look staff photographer, travelling the world in their employ for several years. He subsequently enrolled as a non-matriculating student at Columbia University, attending classes taught by the likes of Calvin Trillin and Mark Van Doren. In the late 1940s Kubrick became enamored of filmmaking, attending Museum of Modern Art showings regularly. To supplement his income, he also played chess for money in Greenwich Village. In 1951, Kubrick used his life savings to finance his first film, Day of the Fight, a 16-minute documentary profiling boxer Walter Cartier. The piece was later purchased by RKO for its This Is America series and played at the Paramount Theatre in New York. Encouraged by his success, Kubrick quit his post at Look to pursue filmmaking full-time. Soon, RKO assigned him to helm a short for their documentary series Pathe Screenliner. Titled Flying Padre, the nine-minute work spotlighted Fred Stadtmueller, a priest who piloted a Piper Cub around his 400-mile New Mexico parish. In 1953 the Atlantic and Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union commissioned Kubrick to direct a half-hour industrial documentary called The Seafarers, his first color film. With the aid of relatives, Kubrick raised some $13,000 in order to finance his feature debut, the war story Fear and Desire. Filmed in the San Gabrielle mountains near Los Angeles with a crew of less than ten people (including Kubrick's then-wife Toba Metz), the picture was filmed silently, with its dialogue dubbed-in later (a measure which ultimately added $20,000 to the final cost). Shown only briefly on the New York arthouse circuit, Fear and Desire failed to earn back its initial investment and was later disowned by its creator. His sophomore feature, the gangland melodrama Killer's Kiss, followed in 1955. A more successful effort, it was sold to United Artists and received worldwide distribution, playing primarily as a second feature. In 1956 Kubrick directed his first studio picture, The Killing. A heist film told via an ambitious overlapping time structure, the film starred Sterling Hayden, with dialogue from the legendary hard-boiled crime novelist Jim Thompson. The result was the director's first artistic triumph, and it brought him to the attention of MGM production head Dore Share, where Kubrick was teamed with novelist Calder Willingham to develop future projects. After preparing a screenplay based on Steven Zweig's story "The Burning Secret" which went unproduced, Thompson joined the duo to adapt the Humphrey Cobb war novel Paths of Glory. Studio after studio rejected the project until Kirk Douglas agreed to star, resulting in a financing deal with United Artists. Shot in Germany, the 1957 film won considerable critical acclaim, and further cemented Kubrick's reputation as a rising talent. However, the next two years left him in a state of limbo, as a pair of proposed projects -- I Stole 16 Million Dollars, a planned vehicle fo