It’s a big deal whenever a long-lost project by a renowned filmmaker is discovered out of nowhere. When that filmmaker is the legendary Stanley Kubrick, who only directed 13 movies in his career, that excitement goes through the roof. Kubrick historian Nathan Abramas has found a completed screenplay for Burning Secret, a film that never went into production.
Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with Calder Willingham in 1956, but for unknown reasons MGM kept it on the shelf. The story is based on the 1913 novella Brennendes Geheimnis by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, and centers on a young boy who befriends a mysterious baron whose real agenda is to seduce the boy’s mother. The book has been adapted a couple of times, once in 1933 in a film that was attacked by the Nazis because of its adulterous themes. A more modern version was released in 1988 and starred Faye Dunaway among others.
The script is currently in the possession of the son of a Kubrick collaborator.
Abrams says, “I couldn’t believe it. It’s so exciting. It was believed to have been lost. In ‘Burning Secret,’ the main character befriends the son to get to the mother. In ‘Lolita,’ he marries the mother to get to the daughter. I think that with the 1956 production code, that would be a tricky one to get by. But he managed with ‘Lolita’ in 1962 – only just.”
So what happens now? Does it get made into a movie? That would be the preferred scenario for those who have missed the director’s work since his final film, 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut. It would be a shame if nothing comes of this, so here’s hoping one of the taste-making studios out there is willing to give us something new from Kubrick because it’s very unlikely this opportunity comes around again. [TheGuardian]
