The films of Stanley Kubrick on DVD: Triumph or tragedy?

The latest filmic scandal to be bruited about the Internet involves a new collection of the later films of Stanley Kubrick on videotape and DVD. The seven-film set -- which includes "Lolita," "Dr. Strangelove," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "Barry Lyndon," "The Shining" and "Full Metal Jacket" -- was released on Warner Home Video June 26. Shortly after that, the howls were heard.

Purists found some of the prints to be in less-than-pristine shape, and found corners cut in any number of places. "This long-awaited collection just about fails on all counts," wrote Peter M. Bracke on Dvdfile.com. "A basic perusing of the set as a whole reveals a surprising, even shocking, lack of effort expended by all parties involved."

Indeed, there are noticeable scratches and specs on the DVD versions of "Dr. Strangelove" and "The Shining." More scandalous in some quarters is the fact that "The Shining" and "Full Metal Jacket" are not letterboxed -- which is to say they are made almost square to fit on a TV screen instead of having the rectangular format moviegoers would have seen in the original releases. Soundwise, most of the films are in anachronistic mono. The digital-compression technology used on the package creates distracting effects on the slower films, particularly the sedately paced "Barry Lyndon." And finally, there are some content and housekeeping issues: A minor line infamously dropped from the laser disc version of "2001" is not rectified; also, while theatrical trailers are included with some of the films, by laser disc and DVD standards, the supporting material is skimpy for the definitive collection from such an important filmmaker.

The DVD presentation is still riveting: The widescreen effects of "2001" and "Barry Lyndon" are aesthetically fulfilling; you do get trailers on several of the films, most spectacularly for "The Shining," surely moviedom's most spine-tingling preview; and in addition to the "Making of 'The Shining'" documentary, directed by Vivian Kubrick, the director's daughter, there's also a taped speech by Arthur C. Clarke on the "2001" disc. And the digital sound allows Kubrick's use of music -- perhaps the most under-appreciated part of his cinematic approach -- to come alive in its savagery.

But what of the problems? Salon Arts & Entertainment spoke with a Warner Home Video technical expert of some 20 years, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He noted first of all that the collection and its added features were put together by Kubrick himself over a four-year period. He implied that fans were lucky with what they had: While repeatedly noting that he could not speak for Kubrick, he said he knew that the director "as a rule would prefer to have his films presented without distraction."

The scratches on some prints, he said, were the best the company could do. "Film processing in the 1970s was quite poor," he said. "A lot of the dirt was processed into the original. It's interesting," he said dryly, "that most directors don't remember their films that way." Some debris, he said, was eliminated electronically from the prints.

The format -- or "aspect ratio" -- controversy is the most complicated. Kubrick, one of the film world's most meticulous experts on cameras, cinematography and projection, decided how his films should be formatted for home viewing. "He basically recomposed for video," the tech expert said flatly. Beyond that, there is this issue, troubling for purists: With the possible exception of "Dr. Strangelove," which was deliberately released with two varying aspect ratios (an idiosyncrasy preserved on the DVD release), no Kubrick film has a "correct" presentation, not even the epochal "2001." Because projection standards for widescreen films varied between England and the U.S., Kubrick shot his films in a way that anticipated various projection formats, or "mattes."

The most trenchant examples of this are the DVD versions of "The Shining" and "Full Metal Jacket." Both fill the TV screen fully. Some Internet complainers have charged that they are "panned and scanned" -- i.e. presented with the main action of the frame centered on the TV screen, even though the subject (a person talking, say) might have originally been far on one side or the other of the screen version. Panning and scanning is a travesty: Viewers are both cheated of the director's original composition and denied a great deal of screen content.

But that is not the case here. It turns out that Kubrick's unconventional solution was actually to "unmatte" the two later films. Consumers are in fact getting more, rather than less, of the image: Sharp eyes on the newsgroup alt.kubrick have spotted a helicopter shadow in the lower right-hand corner of the opening aerial scenes of "The Shining," for example.

Warner's technician conceded that "2001" has a missing line, and that there were compression-technology flaws on "Barry Lyndon" as well. To fit the extraordinary amount of visual information on a movie onto a small disc, he explained, DVD technology identifies unchanging parts of the image and encodes them for continuous use. In "Barry Lyndon," a droll, static film considered a cinematic landmark for its candle-lit cinematography, you can see stationary planes of color shimmering eerily. It's a distraction, and an unpleasant one. The Warner explanation: Movies in the '70s were sometimes shot on film that shook almost imperceptibly as it moved through the camera. This, when digitized, creates the annoying surreality. The Warner rep said the "Barry Lyndon" disc was rejected five times by the company. Still, here I thought the critics have a point: If the compression creates such a distracting side-effect it should not have been used.

Finally, the technician said the mono sound on most of the films came not from Kubrick's storied dislike of stereo but rather the director's distrust of certain sound processes. In a theater in Detroit, say, the dialogue might end up coming out of the wrong speaker. To combat this possibility, Kubrick stuck largely with mono. The one exception, of course, was "2001," which was originally recorded in six channels, easily handled by the extravagant audio capabilities of DVD. "There was very little to be done" (on "2001"), the tech said.

Kubrick's control freakery is of a different sort than that of more optimistic filmmakers like George Lucas. The Marin County mogul's THX certification gently prods theater owners to provide audiences with better film presentation; for "The Phantom Menace" he made myriad technical demands as well, dangling his movie's popularity as a carrot. Kubrick's approach was less rosy-eyed about basic human nature. Wherever the precision of his vision might be compromised, he took steps to eliminate the possibility of human interference. It's a Manichaean worldview precisely in step with that of his films; and ironically, it's that rigidity that produced the DVDs now causing so much controversy among his most die-hard fans.