The new Criterion’s The Complete Kubrick set offers a rare chance to watch the director’s formative works back-to-back. While later titles like 2001: A Space Odyssey dominate popular memory, his first three studio films—The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960)—established the narrative daring and visual rigor that would define his career. This feature walks through each disc, highlighting the daring choices that still influence filmmakers today.
From a Chicago racetrack to the muddy trenches of France, Kubrick’s early catalogue demonstrates a fascination with systems of power, a love of chess-like structuring, and a willingness to scramble conventional storytelling. The following sections unpack the films one by one, citing the cast members, production anecdotes, and the critical responses that surrounded them at the time.
The Killing (1956) – A heist blueprint
Kubrick’s first studio assignment, The Killing, is a lean, 90-minute heist film set against the backdrop of a bustling Chicago racetrack. Sterling Hayden stars as the slick ex-con who masterminds the robbery, surrounded by an ensemble that includes Jay C. Flippen, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor, Timothy Carey and wrestler-turned-actor Kola Kwariani. Each character is treated as a piece on a board, their perspectives shifting as the narrative jumps forward and backward, revealing the same roulette of events from multiple angles.
The film’s visual language replaces the grandiose experiments later associated with Kubrick with sharp low-angle close-ups and tracking shots that heighten tension. Rather than sympathizing with any single player, Kubrick likens the crew to racehorses or chessmen, constantly repositioning them until the perfect moment of the heist arrives. This structural daring would later echo in the works of David Mamet, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Christopher Nolan.
Critics were split when the film arrived. Jean-Luc Godard, writing for Cahiers du cinéma, dismissed it as the work of a poseur, while veteran director Orson Welles proclaimed Kubrick “the greatest director of his generation.” The contrast underscores how the film’s meta-cinematic wink—treating the director as the mastermind who bends audience perception—confounded some and enchanted others.
Paths of Glory (1957) – War, hierarchy, and moral absurdity
Just a year later Kubrick delivered Paths of Glory, an adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s novel about a doomed World-I assault. Set partly in a lavish French estate—the same location later used in Last Year at Marienbad—the film contrasts opulent generals with the filthy, claustrophobic trenches where ordinary soldiers waste away. Kirk Douglas headlines as Colonel Dax, the lone heroic figure caught between duty to his men and the callous orders of superiors.
The movie’s structure is a study in contrast: slow pans across the generals’ ballroom, followed by frantic lateral tracking shots through the mud-filled trenches. Kubrick’s use of meticulous blocking underscores the absurdity of a system that sacrifices its foot soldiers for abstract notions of honor. The climactic scene is not the battle itself but a courtroom-style trial in which three scapegoated soldiers face execution, a sequence that echoes Camus’ existentialism and anticipates modern TV dramas such as The Wire.
At the time of release, French authorities deemed the depiction of the French military too scandalous, refusing distribution for nearly twenty years. Yet the film’s critique is universal: Kubrick targets hierarchical power, not a specific nation. The movie also marks a personal milestone—Kubrick met his future wife, actress Christiane Harlan, during production. She appears briefly as the lone female voice singing a German folk song, a moment that momentarily dissolves the battlefield’s harshness.
Spartacus (1960) – Epic politics within a studio system
By 1960 Kubrick had been tapped to finish Spartacus after Anthony Mann departed the project. Though the film is credited as a Kirk Douglas vehicle, the director’s fingerprints appear in the sweeping panoramas and the stark visual contrast between the slave army’s warm, chaotic formations and the cold, regimented streets of Rome.
Based on Howard Fast’s novel and scripted by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, the epic blends historical rebellion with a secular, class-based allegory. Spartacus, played by Douglas, rises from a gladiatorial arena to lead a slave revolt against a decaying Republic. The film’s most famous line—”I am Spartacus!”—was initially resisted by Kubrick for its melodrama, yet it has endured as a cultural meme.
While the production was a conventional studio picture, the Criterion disc preserves a 1991 reconstruction that reinstates several scenes cut by Universal for political reasons. Commentary tracks include insights from Trumbo’s own notes, Douglas, and even a spirited critique from Howard Fast, who points out historical liberties while praising the film’s visual impact.
Collectively, these three titles illustrate Kubrick’s early willingness to destabilize genre expectations, whether by reshuffling narrative chronology, exposing the cruelty of institutional power, or embedding political subtext within a grand epic.
