With some fascinating insights into an unusual topic new to Kubrick studies, this wide-ranging collection of essays firmly and persuasively situates Stanley Kubrick's work in the art and culture of Central Europe. Robert Kolker, the University of Maryland, author of A Cinema of Loneliness, co-author of Kubrick: An Odyssey
An admirably multisided, cultured and suggestive inspection of some of the key ways in which works and intellectual traditions associated with Mitteleuropa cast shifting shadows across the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick. Mitteleuropa here is not only Germanic but also embraces the rich non-Germanic, post-Habsburg cultures of early twentieth century art, music and literature, whose branchings are traced as often intertwining with the mysteriously unnamed presence in Kubricks work of his Jewishness. Paul Coates, Western University, Ontario, Canada, author of Comparative Cinema: Late and Last Things in Literature and Film and editor of Lucid Dreams: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kielowski
This collection of essays provides informative, impressively researched commentary on an important but neglected aspect of Stanley Kubricks films. Again and again, the authors show us how deeply his pictures were influenced by the middle-European origins of his family. We learn this was true even in such ostensibly unrelated examples as 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining. His entire work is discussed here, along with the most fascinating of his late-career projects, The Aryan Papers. There are intriguing essays on the Polish reception of Kubricks films and his special use of Kafka and Penderecki. The result is a major contribution to the growing literature on Kubricks art. James Naremore, Indiana University Bloomington, author of The Magic World of Orson Welles, More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts, and On Kubrick.
