One of the ways we know a giant was among us is the impressions he left behind. Stanley Kubrick left large ones and I want to give you my impression of his.

I'm not going to talk at length about 2001: A Space Odyssey or A Clockwork Orange. While 2001 was incredibly important culturally, initiating the run of outer space movies that followed and firmly implanting itself into our consciousness, I personally find it rather boring without the aid of mind altering substances. Clockwork is fascinating and intellectually intriguing, yet cold, without heart or humanity.

I want to go back to the young Kubrick, the black and white Kubrick, and trace some of my favorites.

His first great work was The Killing (1956). This dandy piece of film noir about the execution of a heist at a racetrack, is 90 minutes worth of tension, driving you at a breakneck speed to the unexpected conclusion. Time shifts, revisiting scenes from different perspectives, and some terrific performances make this a great way to spend an hour and a half.

Paths Of Glory (1957) is the first of his antiwar movies, all very different. It's WW I and old men are sending young men off to die and are upset when the young men aren't thrilled about being cannon fodder. This is essentially a trial movie and Kirk Douglas gives a first rate performance as the defense counsel. Like most of his early movies, there are human beings at the heart of this and there is an economy of writing and spirited pace. This was #98 on the AFI list and is only 88 minutes long. A double feature of this and The Killing would give you a good idea of his early range and skill.

In 1960, Kubrick is brought into a project in the middle, a rare situation, but Kirk Douglas needed a director for Spartacus and had enjoyed working with Kubrick on Paths Of Glory. It's been described as a gladiator film for intellectuals, but it's more than that. Once again it's about people, about the need to be free, about not wanting to risk your life for another man's pleasure. This project has a raft of great actors, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Kirk Douglas, and Jean Simmons all do fine work. Tony Curtis is also in it -- this can't be helped. It also has the grandeur of Rome and great battle scenes. It also has, for my money, one of the more sensual moments I've ever seen -- Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons, under a blanket, under the stars, free for only a brief time, able to love each other freely for the first time. Note: if you rent this picture, be sure to get the letterboxed restored edition, or else you will miss a large amount of the movie.

Kubrick hated this big-time Hollywood experience, hated the meddling and the lack of control, and left Hollywood afterwards, going to England and his own independent productions.

Which brings us to Lolita (1962). This is a good try at an impossible trick, to bring a classic novel about pedophilia to the screen in 1962. Nabokov adapted his book, but it was a series of compromises, Lolita had to be older, the titillation had to be more innocent, and on and on. That it's as good a movie as it is says something about the skill of those involved. Frankly, it's still a bit unpleasant, although compared to the latest version, it's Mary Poppins.

In 1964 he made Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. I guess that title is a clue that it's not a drama. Interestingly, this is the first movie with the kind of pre-release TV ad blitz which is common these days. It worked in my case, as I was in Manhattan to see it the first day. I wasn't disappointed as this is a spectacularly funny movie. From the titles run over a shot of a jet being refueled in midair while "Try A Little Tenderness" is played on the soundtrack, to it's devastating ending, Kubrick never stops attacking. There are terrific performances by Sterling Hayden as a mad general, George C. Scott as an only marginally more sane one, and three brilliant performances by Peter Sellers. The three characters he plays are each incredibly different, not a trick of makeup or voice, but fully functional characters, each acted beautifully (if outrageously in the case of the title role.) When you see it, watch the scene with Sellers as a British officer trying to calm the utterly insane Hayden and get the code which will recall the planes on their way to bomb the USSR, it is a deliciously underplayed scene on both their parts. Later, there's a great moment where George C. Scott gleefully explains to a horrified audience how a rogue US bomber could actually sneak under the Soviet defenses and drop its payload. I could name a dozen more, but suffice it to say this was #15 on the AFI top 100 and that's not too shabby, especially for a comedy.

At this point, Stanley Kubrick was 36 years old. In my opinion, his best work was behind him, as the rest of his movies were less about people and more about his directing. Barry Lyndon was beautiful, but was more a painting than a movie. There are few really memorable human characters in his coming work, HAL is probably the best remembered of his later villains. Unless the grinning, mad, Jack Nicholson, chopping down a door and saying "here's Johnny" in The Shining is your idea of human. Interestingly, with the exception of Spartacus (on which he was a hired hand), the movies I've reviewed were all in black and white. Check them out, you won't be disappointed.