ARYAN PAPERS: Kubrick's Never Completed Holocaust Movie
"she would tell me I was her own cretin monster, her own nightmare...."
Underlined dialogue from Kubrick's working copy of source novel 'Wartime Lies' : Stanley Kubrick Archives SK 18/2/1/1-2
"I was seeing what happens if one is turned into a small animal like a rabbit...."
Underlined dialogue from Kubrick's working copy of source novel 'Wartime Lies' : Stanley Kubrick Archives SK 18/2/1/1-2
"... by assuming false identities they survive the war."
Kubrick's own notation on pages of his source novel Stanley Kubrick Archives SK 18/2/1/1-2
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The Brooklyn-born Kubrick, was raised by his parents as a secular Jew.He had no bar mitzvah, and his three marriages involved no Jewish wedding ceremony. At no stage in his early life did he take any interest in Judaism or any other form of religion. rom an early point in his film-making career, Kubrick had considered making a film about the Holocaust. He even asked the famous author Isaac Bashevis Singer to write a screenplay and was disheartened when Singer turned him down.
During the early 1990s, following the commercial success and critical controversy generated by his epochal 2001 a Space Odyssey, Kubrick spent months trying to adapt a novel with its background in the holocaust. Entitled Wartime Lies, it was the American author Louis Begley's first novel and had attracted considerable critical praise.The novel focuses on the efforts of two Polish Jews - a young boy and his aunt - to escape the Nazi roundups of fellow Jews by posing as Catholic Poles. By August, 1991 Kubrick. had completed his first draft of a screenplay, based on months of reading the novel Wartime Lies and researching its plot, background and settings. He decided to call the movie Aryan Papers, a nod to the pair's crucial need to obtaining official documents identifying them as Aryans. |
Why Kubrick's Interest in making Wartime Lies into a movie ?Kubrick's intention to make a movie out of Begley's novel is understandable because the book contains several elements that feature in the director's cinematic oeuvre. Kubrick's conviction of the innate human propensity to violence in all its forms is an essential theme in his movies and one that is revealed again in his drafts for Aryan Papers. Depictions of war in various centuries feature in Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket. Violence in other forms are portrayed in The Killing, Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut. And Kubrick's fascination with human behaviour under the impact of stress in its various forms is a recurrent theme in every movie he made. The plot of Wartime Lies and its emergence in Kubrick's drafts the proposed movie focuses on a young Jewish woman (and her nephew) attempting to evade the Nazi round-up of Jews also had some resonance for the director/ Not only was Kubrick Jewish, his wife Christiane was a German Jew whose childhood and youth was spent in Germany during the 1930s and the second world war. Kubrick was hardly an observant Jew -nor were his parents - but the influence of Judaism on his work remains a matter of some controversy. 
Documents and source material for 'Aryan Papers' in the Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts, London.
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What steps did Kubrick take in preparing to make Aryan Papers ?Kubrick spent considerable time and energy in preparing to convert Wartime Lies into a a movie. The evidence contained in the boxes of material in the Kubrick Archives reveals that the director painstakingly read the book several times and selected key elements for their cinematic and narrative potential. He drew up draft script outlines, and decided on a cinematographer, locations, ran screen tests and even selected a Dutch actress Johanna Ter Steege to play the crucial role of a beautiful and determined Polish Jew who helps her young nephew escape the Nazi roundup.
JOoanna ter Steege in costume for Kubrick's screen test for the lead role in 'Aryan Papers'.
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ARYAN PAPERS REFLECTS KUBRICK'S CINEMATIC PREOCCUPATIONS
War and conflict were crucial elements in Kubrick's cinema. most notably in Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket. This theme was also deeply embedded in Barry Lyndon and even in Spartacus (although Kubrick did not claim this epic as his own project).
The Vietnam War features in 'Full Metal Jacket'
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World War I and trench warfare is the subject of 'Paths of Glory'
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The Seven Years War of the 19th Century provides a background to 'Barry Lyndon'
