Lost Stanley Kubrick screenplay, Burning Secret, is found 60 years on

www.theguardian.com ^ | 07/16/2018 | Staff

[Red Badger]

His first world war classic, Paths of Glory, is one of cinema’s most powerful anti-war movies, widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, as was his Roman epic, Spartacus, both of which starred Kirk Douglas. Now a “lost” screenplay by director Stanley Kubrick has been discovered – and it is so close to completion that it could be developed by film-makers.

Entitled Burning Secret, the script is an adaptation of the 1913 novella by the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig. In Kubrick’s adaptation of the story of adultery and passion set in a spa resort, a suave and predatory man befriends a 10-year-old boy, using him to seduce the child’s married mother.

He wrote it in 1956 with the novelist Calder Willingham, with whom he went on to collaborate on Paths of Glory the following year.

The screenplay was found by Nathan Abrams, professor in film at Bangor University and a leading Kubrick expert, who said: “I couldn’t believe it. It’s so exciting. It was believed to have been lost.”

He added: “Kubrick aficionados know he wanted to do it, [but] no one ever thought it was completed. We now have a copy and this proves that he had done a full screenplay.”

Kubrick made only 13 feature films, but he is revered as a master film-maker and supreme visual stylist with a painstaking approach to meticulous detail. His sci-fi epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, pushed the boundaries of special effects and was at No 6 in the most recent Sight and Sound critics poll of the greatest films of all time.

[SNIP]

His Burning Secret screenplay bears the stamp of the script department of MGM. It is dated 24 October 1956, when Kubrick was still relatively unknown, having just made his crime heist film, The Killing.

[DesertRhino]

“If Kubrick didn’t make it, he probably didn’t think it was any good.”

You nailed it. That has been sitting there since the 50s. There is a reason for that. Not a doubt.

[dainbramaged]

Stanley Kubrick made some excellent films and my favorite is “The Killing” (1956) about a race track robbery starring Sterling Hayden and just about every scary mug in Hollywood at the time.

[DesertRhino]

Eyes wide shut was not some porn flick. It was basically about the perverts in power, running the world. It was more or less Pizzagate, Podesta, Epstein and lolita express, Hillary, Bohemian grove, etc.

[bmwcyle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUlStJ__UuU

[Ticonderoga34]

Eyes wide shut was not some porn flick. It was basically about the perverts in power, running the world. It was more or less Pizzagate, Podesta, Epstein and lolita express, Hillary, Bohemian grove, etc.

Yes, it was about secret societies and their strange rituals.

Eyes Wide Shut didn't make sense to me until all the stuff about spirt cooking dinners and the weird stuff about the Podesta brothers starting coming out. Now I understand what the movie was about.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Eyes wide shut was not some porn flick. It was basically about the perverts in power, running the world. It was more or less Pizzagate, Podesta, Epstein and lolita express, Hillary, Bohemian grove, etc.

Well then, he managed to make those subjects boring as well. Posts about them on Reddit were far more interesting than that film.

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “Well then, he managed to make those subjects boring as well. Posts about them on Reddit were far more interesting than that film.” <<

Exposing perverts is not well supported in the 5th column.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Exposing perverts is not well supported in the 5th column.

Say wha?? Are you saying that since I found Eyes Wide Shut to be a boring, lousy film that I am a Fifth Columnist somehow running interference for the Pizzagate pervos?

[editor-surveyor]

.
Well, I was wondering out loud anyway.

Obviously the theme didn’t grip you.

[Jagdgewehr]

Yep. Very predictable.

[Borges]

Barry Lyndon is a masterpiece. EWS looks better with every passing year.

[corkoman]

Agree that Barry Lyndon was a masterpiece.

[fhayek]

I have an altar in my basement to Stanley Kubrick. Not really, but pretty close.

[fhayek]

Having seen most of Kubrick's films, I was reluctant to watch Barry Lyndon. I dunno, I just didn't think I would like it. I should have known better. It may have been his greatest film.

[YogicCowboy]

And we had to wait 60 years for it.

[YogicCowboy]

Lifelong scientific/fantastic fiction nerd - book and film.

I saw 2001 in a spectacular Century Dome theater when it was first released. I thought even then as a boy that it was a gussied-up mash note to Evolution.

Kind of like a backcover blurb of a Carl Sagan book stretched out to two hours.

[Big Red Badger]

Clockwork Orange was a
Great Drive-in movie.

“Singin in the Rain!”

[gymbeau]

I agree. I thought it was anti-stupidity-and-assholery.