40. The Shining
Arguably Kubrick's final bona-fide masterpiece, this adaptation of a famous Stephen King novella is one of those rare examples where the cinema transcends the novel in almost every conceivable way. Frequently at the top of best horror lists The Shining is a chilling, claustrophobic and deeply haunting endurance test that still retains its power to terror 30 years on!
41. Had the Guts to Tackle Napoleon
Kubrick intended an epic take on the great influential French leader but due to the financial failures of other historical epics surfacing at the time (including Sergri Bondarchuk's War and Peace and the Napoleon themed Waterloo) the backers got cold feet and pulled out. This wasn't before the director undertook meticulous research (including reading some 500 books), planned and created a detailed catalogue of Napoleon's events, wrote a thorough screenplay, scouted locations in France and Romania and seriously considered David Hemmings for the lead role. Alas it went down in history as THE greatest 'unrealised film project' and it's detailed in full in the wonderful but horrifically expensive Taschen book
Stanley Kubrick's Napoloen: The Greatest Film Never Made.
42. His Films were Mostly Derided by the Critics... Only to Be Hailed as Seminal Classics Decades Later
From the great Andrew Sarris and Roger Ebert to the queen mother of criticism herself Pauline Kael, most reviewers considered Kubrick's films impersonal and misanthropic at first only to fully appreciate them later on. Case in point: Ebert originally thought The Shining was a poor horror movie only to subsequently include it in his canon of classic movies decades later, while 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is now considered an innovative masterpiece, at the time was critically derided.
43. Died on A Career High
Unlike other cinematic greats including Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and D.W Griffith, Kubrick's last film before he passed was the hugely controversial comeback film Eyes Wide Shut. Some even say he died due to the relief of making a film that finally received worldwide acceptance.
44. Documented Everything
Kubrick's personal library was as famous as the great man himself. Thanks in part to his documentarian and photographer instincts he had a desire to document just about anything - making him a peerless researcher. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vic2rVsx71I