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‘He erased the entire project’ … the book Stanley Kubrick didn’t want anyone to read to be published

Half a century since the perfectionist director vowed to block it, a critique that dared to discuss flaws in his films is to be published

Stanley Kubrick, the relentless perfectionist who directed some of cinema’s greatest classics, was so sensitive to criticism that, in 1970, he threatened legal action to block publication of a book which dared to discuss flaws in his films. The director of Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, warned the book’s author and publisher that he would fight “tooth and nail” and “use every legal means at his disposal” to prevent its publication – and he did. However, I expressed great admiration for most of his other films.” His book describes 2001 as “a magisterial achievement” and Kubrick’s 1957 first world war movie Paths of Glory as “a film of intoxicating visual sophistication”.

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