Missing links: exploring traces of Kubrick’s ‘unknown’ early works

Previously unseen materials donated by the Stanley Kubrick estate to the London University of the Arts Special Collections Archive sheds new light on what has been a relatively ‘unknown’ period in the auteur’s early career, between departing Look magazine and forming Harris-Kubrick Pictures (1950-55)1.

The following case studies and analyses draw from this new, as yet uncatalogued material to reveal autobiographical resonances, such as Kubrick’s photographic work translating into film, his personality inflecting characterisation and the ‘lived’ milieu of Greenwich Village and greater New York City. The archival deposit includes numerous script drafts, scenarios and dialogue fragments, revealing Kubrick’s abiding concerns – obsessive love, psychosexual drama, jealousy, revenge, ambiguity, ambition and violence – lending it an overriding seediness and pulp aesthetic. It also presents a young man filled with creative energy and ideas, negotiating self-doubt while increasingly honing his skills as a writer and adapter, some of which remains adroit and affecting.