Stanley Kubrick is an exceptional filmmaker whose control over his films is so complete that it extends from the supervision of every production detail to the planning of elaborate advertising and distribution campaigns; from the film editing to the inspection of the projector for opening night; from the selection of the subject matter to the writing of his own screenplays.

The precocious son of a middle-class doctor, Kubrick was born in the Bronx, New York. He watched many films with his mother, learned chess at age ten from his father, was playing the game for money at twelve, and exhibited a mania for photography at thirteen. Though active as a drummer and the class photographer, he was bored at William Howard Taft High School and reportedly graduated with a sixty-seven average. In 1945 he began a four-year stint as a photographer for Look magazine. A photographic innovator, Kubrick was...