Kubrick: By Means of Music
By Tony Palmer
This is the text of a speech film director, Tony Palmer, gave at a concert celebrating Kubrick's life and films through his music. The concert was organised by the Kubrick family and held at the Barbican in London, April 16, 2000.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Tony Palmer, and I have the pleasure - actually, the privilege - to
guide you through this evening. Stanley Kubrick only made 13 films
- I say 'only', but as a body of work they represent a towering achievement
which no film maker, even if he or she doesn't like to admit it, ever quite
escapes. Indeed, their long shadow profoundly influences all of us who struggle
to make our own little films - because of Kubrick's absolute technical mastery,
his intensely moral stance, his passion, and above all his vision - totally
original and totally inspirational. He makes us try harder, because he makes us
believe that nothing is impossible. One aspect of his genius, and the
aspect which concerns us this evening, was and is his love of music. I
sometimes think that the history of the cinema is divided into two eras, Before
Kubrick, and After Kubrick. Before Kubrick, most film producers thought that
music in films was essentially decorative - it wound up the emotions, or
provided an excuse for song and dance, often very wonderful, but not exactly an
absolutely essential ingredient to the 'complete' film. Now think about the '2001' music
you've just heard. It's odd, isn't it? I even called it the '2001' music. To
hell with Richard Strauss or Also Sprach Zarathustra. So powerful are the images that Kubrick created with this music,
so perfect is the marriage of music and image, that it is now impossible to
hear that music without thinking of '2001'. And I've lost count of the number
of times this music has appeared in ads or TV trailers with images vaguely
similar to those of '2001'. But why? That music had existed for almost 70 years
before Kubrick stamped it indelibly upon the collective consciousness of a
worldwide audience. That is a measure of the man's genius. And who else would have dreamed
that, as the spaceship in '2001' effortlessly dances across the heavens, it
would be accompanied by one of the most graceful dances ever written. Once Stanley Kubrick started using
(let's call it) 'classical' music in his films, there was really no turning
back. Everyone started using 'classical' music, and I don't just mean in films
about classical composers. Two of the most heavily Oscar nominated films last
year, for instance, had 'classical' music at their heart. I was startled to
realise during the blockbuster The Insider, starring Al Pacino and
Russell Crowe, that the emotional climax of the film was being underpinned by
huge sections of 'The Litany' by Arvo Pärt, the great contemporary Estonian composer, and not
exactly on everyone's 'hit list'. And Spike Jonze (also nominated for an Oscar as Best Director) begins his film Being John Malkovich with 5 minutes of
Bartok! I hope both films are paying the Kubrick Estate a serious royalty for
his inspiration! But Kubrick's knowledge and love of
music extended way beyond 'classical' music. His knowledge and love of popular
music was breathtaking, which is, as I remember, how our paths first crossed. I
was making a television series called All You Need is Love, being the
history of American popular music, and he was making 'The Shining. I
quickly realised that above all else Kubrick understood the power of popular
music to evoke memories and feelings in the general imagination way beyond the
actual melodies or words of an individual song. Dr Strangelove, for
instance, ends with the world going up in a fireball of atomic explosions,
accompanied by Vera Lynn singing "We'll meet again. don't know where,
don't know when..." Yes, it's ironic; yes, it brings a smile at the end of
an otherwise deeply pessimistic (although hilarious) voyage through our rotten
little world. Think of Full Metal Jacket, another meditation on the
barbarity of war. It ends with the Rolling Stones screaming out Paint it
Black - "I look inside myself and see my heart is black". And think of Eyes Wide Shut. 'Popular' songs are embedded in the soundtrack; apart from all the memories
that these songs evoke, the words of these songs are constantly used to enrich
the text that the actors are speaking. When I fall in Love, performed by
Victor Sylvester; I Got It Bad by Duke Ellington; Strangers in the
Night by Eddie Snyder. Indeed, Eyes Wide Shut, which I am certain
will soon be ranked among the masterpieces of cinema once all the hype has been
forgotten, is a perfect illustration of Kubrick's understanding of and use of
music. Shostakovich's waltz and Ligeti sound side by side with the waltzes of Victor
Sylvester and Duke Ellington, as well as music specially written by Jocelyn
Pook, one of the more interesting of contemporary English composers. Take the Shostakovich waltz, for
instance. This for me is a very good example of the infinite care with which
Stanley Kubrick chose the music for his films. Eyes Wide Shut - well,
who can say what it is about; human frailty, sexual jealousy, the power of
dreams, terror of the unknown - in ourselves, in our souls, not really knowing
what horrors we are capable of, the forgiveness of love? I prefer to say that,
above all else, as a work of art it holds up a huge mirror and forces us to
confront ourselves and the mess we make of our lives. Just so the Shostakovich
waltz, actually from the Second Suite for Dance Band, written in late
1938 as a direct response to the 'New Economic Policy' issued in the summer of
that year by that jolly Georgian, Josef Stalin, on the 'role of music' in
contemporary society. Aha, but, as always with Shostakovich, that was not the
whole story. At the same time as he was writing
the waltz, many of his closest friends were being murdered by the jolly
Georgian, including the director Meyerhold and his wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh, whose eyes were
repeatedly stabbed until she bled to death. Remember the title of the film? Eyes
Wide Shut! In 1938, it is now reckoned that in Moscow alone, 1,000 people
per day were being executed. And we now know from Shostakovich's letters that
he viewed the 'waltz' as a 'dance of death', the sound of a rotten society
whirling itself to its destruction. And guess what? At the time he was writing
the 'Dance Suite', he was also discussing with Meyerhold a work to be called
'Masquerade', a ballet with masks. And the central scene in Eyes Wide Shut is
just that, a ballet with masks. And at the same time, Shostakovich was
orchestrating an opera called Vienna Blood by none other than the
Viennese Waltz King himself, Johann Strauss; and where does the original story
which inspired Eyes Wide Shut take place? Well, Vienna, of course. Best of all, how ironic that
Shostakovich's waltz begins with precisely the same chord progression, but in
reverse, of one of the most famous of all waltzes, The Blue Danube, and
guess who had used that waltz before? Well, Stanley Kubrick, of course. No-one, in the entire history of
cinema, ever used music so precisely, and with so many underlying meanings. This
next piece is from A Clockwork Orange. I'll leave you to work out its
multiplicity of meanings in the context of Kubrick's film. Answers on a
postcard please. The successful re-release of A Clockwork Orange recently brought back, for me, many extraordinary memories. I was lucky enough
to be at what I think was the first ever screening in the summer of 1971 at the
Warner Cinema in Leicester Square, at midnight! I can still remember the shock
I felt, and indeed it is a shocking film. But part of the shock is again in its
use of music. Beethoven? In a film about, well, among other things, violence?
Rossini? Cuddly Rossini? Purcell? Elgar!? Not to mention the beloved Gene Kelly
and Singin' in the Rain. Come on!! This is OUTRAGEOUS. And SHOCKING! And that was the point. To make us
think again about what this music means and meant to the composers who wrote
it. Just think of the Beethoven 9th Symphony. Kubrick says, in the film:
this is Alex, the hero talking as he contemplates the latest bit of
'ultra-violence': "Oh bliss...bliss and heaven. Like a bird of rarest spun
heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a space ship". Space ship?
'2001'? Metal? 'Full Metal', perhaps? And Beethoven? "Freude schöner Götterfunken ...alle Menschen werdern Bruder".
"Joy - spark of divinity - all men shall be brothers". Too close for
comfort, I'd say. For me, nothing in the music of the
film is accidental, or incidental. And think about this: the film begins with
an arrangement of Purcell's Funeral March for Queen Mary, whom Purcell
loved very greatly and admired. It is music for the passing of someone which is
truly loved, and it was no surprise when it was played at his own funeral later
the same year. The passing of an age; the passing of an ideal. The film The Shining begins
with that marvellous swooping camera shot up a vast valley as we slowly but
surely pick out Jack Nicholson in his car heading up the valley towards the
Overview Hotel and his eventual destruction. Everyone remembers the shot, but
what do you hear on the soundtrack? 'Dies irae, dies illa' - day of anger; day of reckoning. And in A
Clockwork Orange, Kubrick begins the film with Purcell's Funeral March. But
between the third and fourth stanza in the film, there it is again: 'Dies
Irae'. As it is in Full Metal Jacke. This is music with a message. I suspect it irritated the American
Academy - and Mr Kubrick - that you couldn't actually award an Oscar for Best
Music Score for a Kubrick film, because Purcell or Strauss or Rossini weren't
around to make the acceptance speech thanking their mother. Oddly, the one film
that did win the Oscar for Best Music Score went to the American composer
Leonard Rosenman for his arrangement of George Frederick Handel in the film Barry
Lyndon. I'll bet it offended all the purists, hey, but what the hell? Handel,
who played for Frederick the Great, one of whose wars is a cornerstone of the
film; Handel, who loved the grand gesture - remember the 40 oboes in the Royal
Fireworks Music? Rosenman, and Stanley Kubrick, got it absolutely right. It's not for me to describe Stanley
Kubrick the man. But the one thing I am certain of, is that he was not the
Kubrick of repute - you know, the mad monk of St Albans, the bearded recluse
living behind barbed wire and electrified fences, who only spoke to others at
night, on the telephone, altogether a bit rum really. All that was garbage. He
was gregarious, funny, a truly loving family man, who cared nothing whatsoever
for the trappings of success or fame or show-biz or the right 'image' or the
demands of Hollywood, but who at the same time was incredibly well informed,
and of course particularly about music. I'm told that before he finally decided
to include a piece in a film, he would play it literally hundreds of times. After
all, his knowledge of Ligeti, Shostakovich, Bartok, Handel, Sibelius, Elgar and
Rossini doesn't sound to me like that of a man cut off from the world, rather
of someone who was endlessly curious about the world and its culture. And I think that's the main point I
would like to leave you with about Kubrick as a film maker, as an artist. I
don't think in the end he was terribly interested in stories as such, although
he was a wonderful storyteller. Nor do I think he was ever interested in the
commercial aspect of film making, although it did matter to him very much that
his films were seen as widely as possible, and he took an immense interest in
their commercial success. No; in the end, what gripped his imagination was us,
we human beings, our aspirations, our disappointments, our longings, our fears,
us as fallible, tragic, muddled human beings. All his films, as I said, hold up a
gigantic mirror and compel us to confront with an unflinching gaze us, as we
are. That is his greatness as an artist; that is why, in the end, we admire
him. That's why, in the end, he is irreplaceable. And, of course, he knew about
our fears, and he knew about the terror and horror that all of us experience,
and all of us must find a way to overcome, if we are to survive. There are two last footnotes I
should like to add. He lived for almost half his life in England. Odd, isn't
it, that a Middle-European Jew from the Bronx should have settled in England.
Well, maybe not so odd, but eventually he always thought of England as home,
and for this, all of us who also love England should be eternally grateful. In A
Clockwork Orange he used two of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches. He used them ironically, again to tell us something about ourselves
and about the country which, as I've said, he adopted. But he also used them, I
believe, especially No.4, to tell us something of himself and of what he cared
about - honour, trust, truth, and love. Love of place, and love of people. Thank
you Stanley for what you gave us. At the end of Stanley Kubrick's
film Paths of Glory - and there's an ironic title if ever there was one
- after the four soldiers falsely convicted of cowardice have been shot:
"they died a wonderful death", says their commanding officer: there
is a devastating moment when the two opposing sides, the Germans and the
French, are gathered together in a bar, and it looks like a brawl is about to
break out. The situation is saved when a young girl is persuaded to sing an old
German folk song and restore calm. "There once was a faithful soldier whose love for his maiden was endless. So when they told him his sweetheart was
dying, his world and his life lost all
meaning". In the film, the young girl was played
by, and the song sung by, Susanne Christian. Susanne Christian became Mrs
Kubrick, who is with us tonight, and to sing the song first sung for Stanley
Kubrick over 40 years ago, is their daughter, Anya.