Listening to Stanley Kubrick (10 page)

Spartacus’s group establishes a camp and North provides lively music for the montage of the activities there. Spartacus consults with his men over a map of Italy, Antoninus and another man spar, a woman milks a goat. Later, Varinia floats in a small pond and Spartacus sees her there. The music of this scene provides a respite from the military music of the camp and the march. Varinia’s theme is prominent here. When she tells Spartacus that she’s pregnant with his child, her cue switches to the major mode. He kisses her and soon we are back to a brief scene of marching and to North’s driving music.

The slaves’ triumphant entrance into the city of Metapontum is accompanied by ecstatic music in the orchestra. Back in Rome, members of the Senate sit in a bath and share details about the battles with Spartacus’s army. Two musicians stroll about the bath playing music. One is playing a meandering modal melody on what is perhaps an aulos, a Greek woodwind instrument similar to the modern oboe. The other man is playing a small plucked harp (perhaps meant to be a lyre or kithara).
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In his research of ancient music, North would have discovered that the Romans often adopted the instruments of other cultures including those of the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Egyptians.

When we return to Spartacus’s group, they have reached the sea. They make camp and celebrate, dancing to folklike music featuring tambourines. While this cue plays softly in the background, Tigranes, the pirate, tells Spartacus that Crassus has paid the fleet of pirate ships (on which Spartacus and the slaves were to escape Italy) to leave Brundisium. Spartacus and the slaves are trapped between two advancing armies at the southern tip of the country. Crassus has forced Spartacus and his army to turn back and march on Rome. The underscore begins to stir as Spartacus thinks. He commands Antoninus to tell the trumpeters to play. North responds with appropriate calls for the brass, as Spartacus tells the news to his people. Kubrick intercuts scenes from Spartacus’s speech with scenes from Rome in which Crassus takes over the commander of Rome’s army. When the armies set forth, North urges them on with cues drawing upon related earlier themes. The cue is in three parts, with Spartacus’s theme at the center and the music of the Roman army on either side of it, hemming it in. By constructing the cue in this fashion, North musically illustrates the position of the slave army.
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Gentle, pastoral music accompanies Spartacus’s walk through the camp at night. He sees people of all ages and sizes. He sees soldiers, and he sees families. The opening gesture of Varinia’s theme makes an appearance as Spartacus looks at a young boy, perhaps thinking of the son he hopes for. He and Varinia talk in their tent, and when he asks her to tell their son about him, should he not survive, the strings play her theme.

As the slave army waits for the battle with the army of Rome, North provides percussive hits, which work with Kubrick’s editing. For each hit, we see a different part of the army, the front line on horseback, the varied faces of the army standing and waiting, the commanders. As he did at the end of
Paths of Glory
, Kubrick humanizes the army, in this case showing old fighting next to young, women alongside men. This is a force of individuals. An ominous low hum accompanies the shot of the faceless Roman army opposite. Trumpet calls tear through the tension, and the advancing Roman army provides rhythm with their formation marching. North’s music begins in earnest when Spartacus has his men roll flaming logs toward the Roman army. The cue is relentless, as is the fighting. When the battle is over, the echo of Varinia’s theme is heard, as are eerie voices as the camera surveys the dead. A baby cries.

In the famous scene in which the prisoners are told that they must identify Spartacus, North begins with low notes that eventually rise up. The motion of the music mimics each of the men rising up and identifying themselves as Spartacus. The surviving prisoners march to North’s drum cadences and low brass. Varinia has been taken to Crassus’s house. In the scene, Crassus attempts to encourage Varinia to feel affection for him. The music in this scene is at times reminiscent of the seduction scene between Crassus and Antoninus, while at times it sounds similar to the chamber music playing when Crassus first saw Varinia at the gladiator school. There are also shadowy references to Varinia’s music, as if a memory. Fragments of the slave theme also appear. Here, the leitmotifs provide a layer of subtext, adding meaning to words spoken on-screen.

A low but determined theme appears as the underscore to a conversation between Spartacus and Antoninus. They are the final two prisoners who are waiting to be crucified. The music gives a sense of purpose, and a feeling that the spirit of rebellion is not dead, but still present, as long as they live. Crassus rides out to see them, asking Antoninus if the other man is indeed Spartacus. While he waits for an answer, North’s score becomes tense, finally breaking as Crassus yells and slaps Spartacus across the face. Spartacus, in turn, spits at Crassus. The orchestra provides accents for both the slap and the spit. Crassus forces Antoninus and Spartacus to fight to the death. The victor is to be crucified. The music for their fight begins in the low strings. It is a combination of the slave theme and Varinia’s theme. After Spartacus kills Antoninus to save him from a slow death on the cross, Crassus taunts him by telling him that Varinia and the child live in his house. This dialogue is accompanied of course by the shimmering ondioline version of her theme.

Varinia, however, will escape to freedom. On her way out of the city with Batiatus—using documents given to them by Gracchus—Varinia sees Spartacus dying on the cross. She shows him his son (who was born during the battle and whom he has not yet seen), and her theme turns to the major mode. Spartacus can say nothing, and she must leave him. The film and cue end with a fragment of Spartacus’s theme and the victorious entrance music heard at Metapontum, but it is Varinia’s theme that plays over the credits, accenting the bittersweet ending. Spartacus must die, but Varinia and their son live on in freedom.

There is a lot of music in
Spartacus
. Some types of scenes, like those in the Senate, have no underscore, while battle and training scenes have much more score than dialogue. The overall mood is one of triumph and determination, with some melancholy melodies. The story of
Spartacus
had political resonance in 1960, especially in light of the Hollywood blacklist
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and the nascent civil rights movement, and this was an aspect of the film that was very important to both Kirk Douglas and Alex North. Art and politics share a bond, and even Spartacus understands this when he tells Antoninus—who wants desperately to fight—that he should teach the escaped slaves a song. “There’s a time for fighting and there’s a time for singing,” says Spartacus. The film depicts a struggle—ultimately lost by the protagonist, but one that will continue. The triumphs and defeats are both present in the score. In his book
Reel Music
, Roger Hickman draws a distinction between Alex North’s score for
Spartacus
and the scores for other epics, like Miklós Rósza’s music for
Ben-Hur
, noting that the mood of
Spartacus
is more pessimistic than that of the other epics:

Brass fanfares still dominate, but North includes prominent low brass instruments in addition to trumpets, a thicker texture, syncopated rhythms, and dissonances. Although this sound has often been equated with the decadence of Rome, it seems rather to suggest its brutality and cruel power. Historically, Rome was about to enter its most dominant era. The music leaves us with the feeling that while Rome, perhaps standing for America, is building its mighty Empire, it is also planting the seeds of its decay.
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By the time Kubrick made
Spartacus
he had made a crime caper, a noir-ish love story, and two war movies, one small in scale, one quite a bit larger. In
Paths of Glory
, we can see Kubrick’s skill in filming battle scenes, while
Spartacus
showed off “Kubrick’s talent for spectacle.”
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About a decade later, Kubrick planned to film another epic—this one about Napoleon—that would have rivaled
Spartacus
in many ways. Kubrick’s Napoleon project never made it to the screen, and consequently
Spartacus
remains the only epic on Kubrick’s resume.

The music for
Spartacus
is also epic in scope, lush and orchestral, filled with many different musical themes. Kubrick’s collaboration with North resulted in a finished product that works well for the film, and the film’s expansive budget allowed North to experiment with modal melodies and many different kinds of instruments. Kubrick had very little say in the script because it was already a finished product by the time he arrived; but the film score, which is normally created later in the production process, allowed him a creative outlet for his opinions and ideas. Although the circumstances of Kubrick’s work on
Spartacus
were unique, the idea of Kubrick as perfectionist was already in the public imagination about him. He was already known to take control of many aspects of filmmaking even though
Spartacus
was only his fifth feature. In 1960, an article stated, “[Kubrick’s] preoccupation with detail has by now become almost legendary.”
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He was thirty-two years old.

Lolita

Kubrick’s next project, a screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel
Lolita
, courted controversy from the very beginning. The novel, which was considered by some to be pornographic and was later hailed as a classic, dealt with a subject thought so delicate and difficult to film; the tagline says it all: “How did they ever make a movie of
Lolita
?” Not only was the subject matter problematic, Kubrick encountered difficulties in adapting this novel to screenplay form. Kubrick had originally engaged Calder Willingham, with whom he had worked on
Paths of Glory
, to write the screenplay, but that partnership did not work out.

Kubrick then engaged the assistance of Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the novel. Nabokov had never written a screenplay before and had at first turned down the opportunity to do the adaptation. When he finally agreed, he started with Kubrick’s rough outline of the first part of the novel. Over a few months, Nabokov states that the two men met about every two weeks; but after a while, “outlines ceased altogether, criticism and advice got briefer and briefer, and by midsummer I did not feel quite sure whether Kubrick was serenely accepting whatever I did or silently rejecting everything.”
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When Nabokov finally delivered his screenplay to Kubrick, it was four hundred pages long, and Kubrick explained that such a screenplay could not be filmed. His producing partner at the time, James Harris, said, “You couldn’t make it. You couldn’t
lift
it.”
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Nabokov took suggestions from Kubrick, deleting some scenes, devising new ones, and generally shortening the script. When the revised script arrived Nabokov reports that it was deemed “fine” by Kubrick.
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But, if the film itself is any evidence, the revision did not satisfy Kubrick. He asked for no more changes, but ended up changing much of the script himself. Perhaps Kubrick felt unable to articulate what he wanted, or perhaps he did not quite
know
what he wanted.

Nabokov received a screen credit for his work, but when he saw
Lolita
, he realized that “only ragged odds and ends of [his] script had been used.”
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Nabokov published his screenplay of
Lolita
as a “vivacious variant” of the novel, which might have been of interest to his readers, complete with a foreword discussing the collaborative process.
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It is indeed enlightening to see what Nabokov made of the experience (and how few of Nabokov’s scenes made it into the movie), but Kubrick was concerned that Nabokov’s published screenplay might give the impression that the film
Lolita
had “spoiled a work of art.”
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In correspondence between Kubrick and Nabokov, there were also indications that Nabokov wanted to be more involved in the adaptation process, seeking to interview possible actors for the film. Nabokov’s input on the film, however, was severely limited. At one point, Nabokov’s wife, Vera, wrote to Kubrick in the hopes that their son could sing for the soundtrack.
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Perhaps she (and her husband) had hoped that Nelson Riddle would set to music the lyrics of a song Nabokov had included in the pages of his screenplay. During the road trip after Humbert picks up Lolita at camp, they stop in a coffee shop and Lolita asks for a dime to play the jukebox. “Oh,” she says, “they have my song.” These are the words:

Lolita, Lolita, Lolita!

For ever tonight we must part:

Because separation is sweeter

Than clasping a ghost to one’s heart.

Because it’s a maddening summer,

Because the whole night is in bloom

Because you’re in love with a strummer

Who brings his guitar to your room.

You know he’s a clown and a cheater,

You know I am tender and true—

But
he
is now singing, Lolita,

The songs I’ve been making for you!
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Kubrick did not use this song, nor did he ask Dmitri Nabokov (who was a successful opera singer), to take part in the music of the film.

Finding an appropriate musical score for
Lolita
had its difficulties, although Kubrick settled on a score that included aspects of both popular and traditional film scoring styles. Kubrick biographer Vincent LoBrutto described the score as “appropriately schizophrenic,” utilizing a lush orchestral style for melodrama and featuring stretches with no musical underscore. Some of the music takes on a satirical irony, especially in the scenes in Charlotte Haze’s house.
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