The purpose of this research is to investigate the special iconography of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematography, deepening into the three films that present his particular vision of societies in a status of dystopia (Dr.Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange), in which the dominating factor is the dipole Man – Machine, Man - Manmade Environment. This peculiar repetitive projection of these dipoles is directly related with Kubrick’s professional origins as a photographer at the beginning of his career in cinematography, as well as with his own ideas about society and man, and the meanings that are hidden or revealed through the cinematic experience.

  Cinema as a form of art, but also as a mechanical procedure, the relationship between man and the movie camera, inevitably produce a new vision, completely different to the one we experience, by natural means, of our environment and manmade surroundings. Respectively, the concepts of utopia and dystopia are key elements for the cinematographic representations of built space, cities, societies and social structures. As a result, through the process of connecting techniques and meanings in the frames of cinematographic action, one can formulate perceptions relevant to philosophy, sociology, even the concept of human nature, in the way the director perceives and projects them and simultaneously are engaged by the spectator.

  Architecture and cinema, both as forms of art and techniques, connect and interact in multiple levels. Either as a precise depiction of existing spaces, or as a built set representation, a figurative model of ideas and design proposals, they constitute a ring that binds the opposite arts and transforms in a background of gradient realism, on which a story is told; the script. With stage and set design, the scenic space of a movie combined with the built architectural environment constitutes a way of depicting the future.

  The Metropolis, as an authentic expression of the future, is a micrograph of mankind. Inside the Metropolis, human existence itself resembles to the cinematic experience, with a never ending amount of audiovisual stimuli, the inhabitant receives. The birth and predominance of Modernity in the heart of the Metropolis, the new way of living that results from the architecture that Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe represent and propose, is the ideal canvas for the narration of cinematographic perceptions.

 Through a parallel presentation of important cinematic moments, as far as representations of utopias and dystopias are concerned, and in juxtaposition with Stanley Kubrick’s course through cinema, we attempt to point out the particularity of his glance and reflections as a director.

  1920-1945: Kubrick as a young man starts his involvement with photography, as an amateur at first, then as a professional. Movies from this period: Metropolis (1927), Just Imagine (1930), Things to Come (1936).

1946-1960: Kubrick turns from a professional photographer to a novice cinematographer, creates his first short and full length movies, and then gradually is incorporated to the film industry. Movies from this period: a variety of b-movies, science fiction and destruction, originating from the disappointment after the end of World War II and the gradual questioning and rejection of the teachings of Modernity.

  1961-1975: The golden era and the conquest of a much desired independence for Stanley Kubrick. He makes Dr Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), giving his own version of dystopia. Movies from this period: Alphaville (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), as well as a plethora of less important films that decompose the image of the city as a symbol, through its destruction.
1976-1999: The late movies of Kubrick. The appearance and gradual domination of simulation and special effects as the main visual expression in cinematic production and the beginning of blockbusters era.

  Kubrick own ideas concerning cinema and the concept of the machine in it, the dilemma between right and wrong, ethics and moral decay, as a cornerstone of his way of thinking, is a repetitive pattern that haunts his human characters. This takes form in the dystopia we observe throughout the works of his mature period (Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange), the existence of the city, the machine or its absence, the substitution of the natural environment by the machine, and are key elements of his way of filming. The machine appears in a variety of manifestations: as a destructive game that can ruin the world, and that man can no longer handle (Dr Strangelove), as an alternative living habitat for a sophisticated mankind that has become just a cogwheel (2001: A Space Odyssey), as a mutation for the environment in which man acts in a manner of ultimate violence, and finally as a catalyst for his own mutation to something clockwork, something mechanical (A Clockwork Orange).