Listening to Stanley Kubrick (2 page)

Chapter One

Early Projects

Shorts and Early Features

The Shorts

When Stanley Kubrick hit his early twenties,
he had already been working for
Look
magazine for a few years. He sold a photo to them when he was still in high school and, following that, produced feature photo essays for the magazine with titles like, “Dixieland Jazz Is ‘Hot’ Again,” “Montgomery Clift . . . Glamour Boy in Baggy Pants,” and “Kids at a Ball-Game.”
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He was moderately successful with these essays, but after working for the magazine for a while, he began to become interested in filmmaking. In an article about Kubrick called “Quiz Kid,” in the photography review the
Camera
from 1949, the interviewer notes, “Stan is also very serious about cinematography, and is about to start filming a sound production written and financed by himself and several friends.”
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It seems as though this might refer to Kubrick’s first short film, a newsreel project suggested by high school friend, and later successful television director, Alex Singer.

Newsreels, which had been very popular before television, were a dying species as the fifties approached, but still, series like Time Inc.’s
The March of Time
and Pathé News produced shorts for movie theaters until 1951 and 1956, respectively.
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Kubrick’s subject for his first short film was boxing. He had done a feature for
Look
magazine called “Prizefighter” in 1949, and he used both the subject and the idea for that feature—a day in the life of middleweight Walter Cartier—as the basis for the film, which he called
Day of the Fight
.
4
It appeared as part of RKO-Pathé’s “This Is America” series, a collection of newsreels that were patriotic features rather than hard news. Another entry in this series was
Sailors All
from 1943, which featured the United States Coast Guard,
5
and “They Fly with the Fleet” from 1951, which follows a cadet in the aviation branch of the United States Navy.
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Kubrick handled many of the details of the production including writing, producing, cinematography, and editing, although his work was uncredited for some of these on the title cards. Singer recalled, “He did that sports short as if he were doing
War and Peace
. He was meticulous with everything.”
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Part of the filmmaking process was figuring out what to do about the musical score. Kubrick had a friend from the old neighborhood—a guy he used to play baseball games with when the two were teenagers—who studied music at Juilliard. Kubrick decided to ask his old pal Gerald Fried to write the music for his very first film. Fried hadn’t written any scores, but he was willing to try it. The two young men watched lots of films in preparation, discussing the various functions of music in film, but most of their learning came “on the job.”

Synopsis and Score Description for
Day of the Fight

Day of the Fight
begins with an exposition about the popularity of boxing. The narration was done by Douglas Edwards, the first television news anchor for CBS. Kubrick had originally considered Montgomery Clift for the narration since they had met on a photo shoot for
Look
, but ultimately chose Edwards for the job.
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Although this is a feature story, the narration has a seriousness that borders on parody. Because Kubrick had studied newsreels like
The March of Tim
e so closely, the attitude of the production has a whiff of propaganda about it:

What is the fascination? What does the fan look for? Competitive sport? Scientific skill? Partly. But mostly he seeks action. Toe to toe body contact. Physical violence. The triumph of force over force. The primitive, vicarious, visceral thrill of seeing one animal overcome another.

Kubrick biographer Vincent LoBrutto senses a hint of film noir in the words and cadences of Edwards’s voiceover: “The narration is crisp and lean, like that of a forties detective novel. . . .The text poses as documentary fact, but it is filled with noir poetry.”
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LoBrutto goes on to talk about the noir-ish lighting, the use of shadows, the kinds of visual aspects of filming that Kubrick would revisit in
The Killing
and
Killer’s Kiss
, although at the beginning of the film and at the very end, the music does not support the noir angle. The central musical cue for the film came to be called, on later compilations, “March of the Gloved Gladiators.” True to its name, it is a lively, brass-heavy fanfare. Just as Kubrick had studied
The March of Time
and other news films to mimic their visual and narrative structure, Fried must have studied the shorts to absorb the musical language of the newsreels. He was also inspired by a distant fanfare in an orchestral work from turn-of-the-century French composer Claude Debussy.
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The main theme of the cue is this fanfare, played by woodwinds and brass. This line is the flute part, easily heard, while the rest of the orchestra fills it out with harmony:

Unfortunately, this cue was replaced by a similar piece—not by Fried—when the short film went into franchise. Most existing versions of the film feature this other music. When asked about this change, Fried had no explanation: “Somebody, for some reason, replaced the original music.”
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The “Gloved Gladiators” theme exists in its entirety on two compilation albums (see appendix C), so one can still enjoy Fried’s triumphant fanfare.

The uncredited driving march that accompanies the title cards continues throughout the first two minutes of the film, during Kubrick’s exposition on boxing and its popularity. The segment ends with a montage of knockouts from various fights that are accompanied with rat-a-tat brass and worried tremolos. When the narrator asks, at about two minutes in, “But why do they do it? The fighters,” the music changes. The underscore becomes sweeter, with a melody in the strings as Kubrick shows us from where—and from what professions—boxers come. But as we return to the gym to see these men from various walks of life train to fight, once again the music becomes more aggressive to match the rhythmic sounds of punching bags and jumping rope. There is something militaristic—even patriotic—in the music here. Once again, the music changes tone as Kubrick cuts to footage of boxing historian Nathaniel Fleischer, who is flipping through a book about boxing.
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The smooth descending melody once again relies on the strings and the woodwinds for a sweeter sound. There is hardly a need for percussive underscore to accompany Mr. Fleischer’s turning of pages. When Fleischer stops on a particular page, the narrator says, “Let’s take one name out of the book at random. Say, Walter Cartier. What would his story be like?”

Now that we have reached the focal point of the story, Fried’s music enters the soundtrack and reflects the change. The tone darkens considerably as Kubrick shows footage of New York City while the narrator explains that during the day of a big fight, waiting is the hardest part. Fried has the low woodwinds pulse a relentless moderate beat over which the higher woodwinds play slightly dissonant and ominous-sounding chords.
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The low brass adds to this dark mood, which culminates as Walter and his twin brother Vincent take communion at an early mass on the day of the fight. The narrator intones: “It’s important for him to get holy communion in case something should go wrong tonight.” Fried’s music shows hints of doubt, melancholy, and darkness. Boxing is a dangerous sport, he seems to be telling us, but of course, that is what makes it so intriguing to its audience. The tone of the
Look
feature on Cartier struck a similar mood. One caption read: “Boxing’s atmosphere discourages gaiety and lightheartedness. The scenes are grim, filled with slashing blows of leather on flesh.”

Kubrick found ways to bring contrast into the film, as did Fried. In an interlude, Vincent makes breakfast for Walter. The short cue is in a major key, underscoring the neutral activity of breakfast as the narrator explains that Vincent—who lives out of town—stays with Walter before big fights. Vincent, in addition to being a lawyer, is also Walter’s manager. Kubrick seems to want to stress their connection, the sweetness of their relationship, and Walter’s gentleness (he is later seen playing with a dog)
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to bring a sharp contrast to the violence of Walter’s day job. This gentle theme is played by the oboe (with harmony provided by the other woodwinds).

As Walter is examined by a physician, the music again takes a darker turn that continues through Walter’s lunch at a steakhouse owned by a friend. According to the narrator, the time is four o’clock, and there are still six long hours to the fight. Fried’s music becomes a bit more anxious, especially in the sequence where Kubrick shows Walter’s “tools of [the] trade”: gloves, robe, ice pack, shorts, tape. The cue at the end of this sequence gives way to tense music with a driving, percussive beat in the woodwinds and brass. The music grows to a fever pitch as the narrator explains Walter’s necessary transformation as fight time approaches:

Walter isn’t concerned with the hands of the clock now, just his own hands. As he gets ready to walk out there in the arena, in front of the people, Walter is slowly becoming another man. This is the man who cannot lose, who must not lose. The hard movements of his arms and fists are different from what they were an hour ago. They belong to a fierce new person. They’re part of the Arena Man: the fighting machine that the crowd outside has paid to see in fifteen minutes.

The pulse of the music at this point has gotten faster, louder, and higher in pitch. But once Walter walks out to enter the ring, Kubrick makes an interesting choice. The underscore disappears, as does the narrator, and the sound of the arena becomes the soundtrack. Because the music has been constant, the ambient noise of the fight draws the audience in. We hear the announcer on the tinny microphone (in typical announcer-speak, he introduces “Walter Car-teer”), the clang of the bell, the cheers and whistles of the crowd, and the sounds of the gloves hitting their targets. The fight becomes real, and the audience experiences it in real time. For the fight itself, Kubrick and Singer both shot from different angles—so as not to lose any footage—and Singer caught Cartier’s knockout of his opponent while Kubrick was reloading.
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As Cartier’s opponent Bobby James hits the canvas, Fried’s score starts again, cymbals heralding the “Gloved Gladiators” cue—which makes its first and only appearance here, and in truncated form—before the referee has even finished counting to ten. The narration returns for a brief comment to neatly tie things up, and Fried’s music ends with a triumphant major chord and crash of the cymbals. Fried led the nineteen musicians well and achieved a tight score for the project. He would go on to score more newsreels for RKO, and indeed his career as a composer for film and television was quite successful thereafter. He continued to work with Stanley Kubrick, scoring the director’s first four features.

After the successful completion of
Day of the Fight
, Kubrick went on to do another short for RKO called
The Flying Padre
, this time for the Screenliner series. The score for this film was written by Nathaniel Shilkret, a successful composer and instrumentalist who worked for RKO-Pathé. This short is the story of two days in the life of Father Fred Stadtmueller, a priest who commutes among his eleven parishes in New Mexico by Piper Cub airplane.

Synopsis and Score Description for
The Flying Padre

For the opening shot, Kubrick shows a beautiful vista and the skies over what we assume must be Harding County, New Mexico. This is accompanied by the voiceover and Shilkret’s pleasant music. Because of the location of Father Stadtmueller’s parishes and the population he serves, Shilkret composed a lively opening that echoes some of the Latino-inspired local music. We see footage of Father Stadtmueller flying his plane, the
Spirit of St. Joseph
, both from inside the cockpit, and from the ground. As the Flying Padre goes in for a landing, Kubrick is sure to let the audience hear the sounds of a herd of cattle that must move out of the way for Stadtmueller’s descending plane. When Father Stadtmueller lands in Gallegos to perform a funeral mass, the music becomes more solemn, entering into a minor key to accompany the footage of the simple funeral procession. As Father Stadtmueller returns to his main parish in Mosquero for evening devotions, the score brightens up. The accompanying music for his actions on the altar includes heavenly chords on a harp. When a young girl visits the priest after breakfast the next morning, Shilkret features a playful melody with accents on a solo guitar, suggesting folk music. As Father Stadtmueller rushes to fly to a woman fifty miles away with a sick child, the music becomes quick and apprehensive. As he arrives, landing in a field, the music becomes grand, nearly triumphant. He prepares to take mother and child to Tucumcari where an ambulance waits. Kubrick and Shilkret build tension here, but once the plane lands in Tucumcari, we breathe a sigh of relief that Father Stadtmueller has saved the day. The final shot is taken from the ambulance as it drives away, leaving Father Stadtmueller and his plane to recede into the distance.