Stanley Kubrick
Movie News: Sacha Baron Cohen To Play Mossad Agent, The Jewish Undertones of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’
This week’s movie news echoes the mystery, beauty and latent horror of the season.
The Secret Jewish History Of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
“I told Kubrick this was a very Jewish film, and I explained why I thought so. Judaism is a breakthrough in thinking.”
The Secret Jewish History of Nuclear War Movies
Kubrick even populated his movie with ersatz Jews — figures who, while not explicitly Jewish on screen, could be read as such.
Remembering Leonard of Mayfair, Stylist for Stanley Kubrick and The Beatles
Leonard Lewis, who has died at the age of 78, worked as a hairstylist for Stanley Kubrick’s films and the Beatles.
The Secret Jewish History of Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick, director of “Dr. Strangelove,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Lolita” is the subject of a new exhibit in San Francisco, which explores his Jewish roots and his unmade film “Aryan Papers.”
Dreaming of Arthur Schnitzler
The Viennese Jewish doctor Arthur Schnitzler, whose 150th birthday was on May 15, 2012 wrote dozens of plays, including “Professor Bernhardi,” about a Jewish doctor, and “Round Dance,” adapted by the German Jewish director Max Ophüls into the 1950 film classic “La Ronde.” Schnitzler’s “Dream Story” inspired the 1999 Stanley Kubrick film “Eyes Wide Shut” starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
Friday Film: Weimar Cinema Beyond Caligari
“Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares,” running at MoMA until March 7, 2011, is billed as the largest-ever retrospective of German cinema from between the Wars to be shown in the United States. The era’s defining cinematic style, expressionism, is well-represented in dozens of offerings, giving a healthy dose of the atmospheric, disturbing and downright spooky in classics like “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “M,” “Nosferatu,” “Vampyr” and “Waxworks.”
Making a Mess of Comedy
Comedy, explained Aristotle, has a vague history, because at first no one took it seriously. We cannot know for certain if Aristotle was deadpanning, but his observation would amuse Saul Austerlitz. According to Austerlitz, American film comedy has not been taken seriously, either. In fact, the author quips, it is American film’s “bastard stepchild.” With his latest book “Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy,” Austerlitz gives us a broad survey of the genre, hoping to spark debate.
Jewish Impostors, Past and Present
Although Shabbetai Zevi naturally gets most of the attention, Jewish history has been marked by a series of impostors. On February 16, Bloomsbury USA publishes a collection by the late New Yorker reporter St. Clair McKelway, “Reporting at Wit’s End,” which includes the complete 1968 book “The Big Little Man from Brooklyn” about the Jewish impostor Stanley Jacob Weinberg.
