Filmworker (2018) Directed by Tony Zierra
7A (documentary)
Anybody with even the slightest interest in Stanley Kubrick should watch
Filmworker. You have never likely heard of Leon Vitali, though you may have seen him. He played Ryan O'Neal's bitter step-son in
Barry Lyndon. After that sizeable, pivotal role, he was much in demand as an actor. But he abandoned his career to work with Kubrick, tackling virtually any assignment Kubrick could dream up and he dreamed up thousands of them. Vitali scouted locations, cast actors, prepared actors, worked in all technical fields, became responsible for looking after prints, restored prints, often frame by frame, wrote publicity releases, helped to prepare and ship negatives, and looked after Kubrick's many and frequent miscellaneous demands--in short, Vitali worked on every aspect imaginable concerning Kubrick's films. He simply became an apostle of Kubrick's, and, after the great director's death, looked after his legacy as much as it was in his power to do so. He did this because he idolized Kubrick's work, even more so after acting in
Barry Lyndon. In effect he dedicated his life to helping the director make movies the way Kubrick wanted to make them. The director, with his obsessive attention to detail, was anything but an easy man to work for--in fact he could be hell. Yet Vitali remained by his side and indispensable to him right up until his death. While this movie deals with Kubrick's personality and the power of film making, it is also a utterly absorbing story of one man's life-long self-sacrifice. The documentary raises some interesting questions? Is Vitali a masochist of epic proportions? Is his commitment to another man's work even healthy? Or is Vitali a genuinely selfless man who has made a contribution to film that is impossible to quantify? He seems like a sane, likeable guy, looking perhaps a bit like a former Rolling Stones roadie in his dotage, but someone with no regrets at all about the choices that he has made in life. While his family members don't see it quite the same way, judging from the vast number of film actors and technicians interviewed in this documentary, Vitali's Herculean efforts on Kubrick's behalf are seen as incredibly important contributions to the art of film. These people don't know why he did it or how he did it, but all are certainly glad that he did it.
Available on Netflix
