One of more interesting aspects of the difficulty in getting a film off the ground is the battlefield of movies that never made it to the big screen. Some came just one shot short, some never even made it past the conceptual stage, but all are the What If children of a parallel universe where Stephen Spielberg actually made E.T. 2.
Stanley Kubrick was no exception to the rule of false starts and films unmade. The man was meticulous, and the widespread nature of his interests must have kept hundreds of ideas from ever seeing the camera.
One of those ideas was focused on the life of his wife’s Uncle – controversial German filmmaker Veit Harlan who was pressured by the Nazi regime to make propaganda. He was eventually cleared of charges of aiding the Nazis when he argued that he was under the threat of his own life had he not made the films he made.
Chistiane Kubrick tells the story of a movie never made and how Steven Spielberg and the reality of the Holocaust emotionally kept Kubrick from making it.
Check out the full video at the Guardian website.
Talk about the movie starts about the 6:08 mark, but skipping ahead means missing out on a talk about Paths of Glory (which we featured last Memorial Day weekend), and how great Kubrick was at dancing.
What do you think?