Kubrick, New and Expanded Edition: Inside a Film Artist's Maze

by Thomas Allen Nelson

Overview

Stanley Kubrick ranks among the most important American film makers of his generation, but his work is often misunderstood because it is widely diverse in subject matter and seems to lack thematic and tonal consistency. Thomas Nelson's perceptive and comprehensive study of Kubrick rescues him from the hostility of auteurist critics and discovers the roots of a Kubrickian aesthetic, which Nelson defines as the "aesthetics of contingency."

After analyzing how this aesthetic develops and manifests itself in the early works, Nelson devotes individual chapters to Lolita, Dr. Stangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining.

For this expanded edition, Nelson has added chapters on Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, and, in the wake of the director's death, reconsidered his body of work as a whole. By placing Kubrick in a historical and theoretical context, this study is a reliable guide into—and out of—Stanley Kubrick's cinematic maze.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253213907
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	06/22/2000
Edition description:	New and Expanded Edition
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	683,698
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Thomas Allen Nelson is Professor of English at San Diego State University and author of Shakespeare's Comic Theory.

Table of Contents

Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
1 Kubrick and the Aesthetics of Contingency: The Shaping of a Film Imagination
2 In The Beginning: From Fear and Desire to Paths of Glory
3 Lolita: Kubrick in Nabokovland
4 Dr. Strangelove: The Descent of Man
5 2001: A Space Odyssey: The Ultimate Cinematic Universe
6 A Clockwork Orange: The Performing Artist
7 Barry Lyndon: A Time Odyssey
8 The Shining: Remembrance of Things Forgotten
9 Full Metal Jacket: The Kubrickian Thing
10 Eyes Wide Shut: House Calls
11 Postscript
Filmography
Selected Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

Though he hadn't made a film that was worth a damn in the 30 years leading up to his death, Kubrick continues to be the artsy darling of the film world, revered by students and critics alike. Nelson here updates his 1982 original to include Full Metal Jacket and the director's final work, Eyes Wide Shut, which flopped. In the advent of his subject's unfortunate demise, Allen also reconsiders the Kubrick canon. At the time of its debut, this title was dubbed "the best book written to date about Kubrick's films" by LJ's reviewer (LJ 4/15/82) and that no doubt remains true. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

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