Christiane Kubrick: the story of the great love of the film director whose pictorial work has been revalued at 91 years old

Christiane Harlan met Stanley Kubrick 67 years ago. To be fair, it would have to be said that it was her renowned filmmaker who met her, falling in love with her talent and beauty after meeting her by chance in a TV movie broadcast on a local German channel. It was 1957 and Kubrick had just arrived at his hotel in Munich to begin filming Paths of Glory and he was so fascinated with the work of that young actress that they asked him to audition to appear in the lyrical conclusion of the film.

Harlan took on the role and gave life to a German prisoner who, dragged and in tears, manages with her beautiful voice to awaken the emotion of a group of French soldiers who have just witnessed the horror of war. The crush between director and actress was of such magnitude that, before filming was finished, Kubrick had already asked her to marry him. “I chose it instantly, at first glance,” she would say. They married, took his last name, raised three daughters—two biological and a third, Katharina, from a previous relationship with Christiane—and lived together for 42 years until a massive heart attack ended the director's life in March 1999. But before and After his death, the media and cultural impact of the person responsible for works such as Spartacus It overshadowed the artistic trail of Christiane who, although she never stood in front of the camera again, has dedicated the bulk of her life to her greatest passion: painting. Now, finally, justice is done to who she is much more than Kubrick's widow.

The British designer Jonathan W. Anderson has taken the works of Christiane Kubrick as inspiration for the men's autumn-winter 2024 collections and the prefall feminine from his eponymous brand, presented a few days ago at Milan fashion week. An “aesthetic orgy” unleashed after reviewing the filmmaker's cult classic, Eyes Wide Shut, whose settings are full of paintings painted by Christiane and were fundamental to the psychology of each sequence. The creative director admires the deeply personal perspective of the 91-year-old artist: “To be so free and so contemporary at that age… I have the feeling that she has no choice but to paint them. It's almost compulsive. And I admire her because when I design clothes I also feel like I have to do it no matter what.” Some lines that now make up the imagery of the collection and appear printed on dresses or sweatshirts. Additionally, Anderson and Kubrick have participated in a short film directed by the artist's own grandson, Jack Elliot Hobbs, and which expands the collaboration carried out by two artists.

“When I was an actress, and I played very silly roles on television, I was very depressed. She wanted to abandon acting and go to a Fine Arts school. But my father went to the school principal and said, 'Please don't take her. Now she is doing very well and if she dedicates herself to painting she will end up dying of hunger.' She was right, but what she did was wrong because they didn't catch me and I didn't understand the reason,” the artist confesses in the short. Born in 1932 in Brunswick, a quiet town in the state of Lower Saxony, Christiane taught herself her trade, painting and sewing the puppets with which she put on small plays during her childhood. Those years were wandering, moving from one place to another to accompany her parents, opera singers, until the outbreak of World War II.

Having just come of age, in the early 1950s, she began a career as an actress in theater, musicals and television that she stopped suddenly after meeting the man who would become her husband. She fulfilled her desire to study Fine Arts by moving with him to the United States and has exhibited her works, focused on moments of family life and landscapes that “portray English nature in all its glory and diversity,” in cities such as New York, Rome and London. Although she stopped getting in front of the camera, her husband continued to rely on her talent by inserting her pictures into her films.

In 1978 the entire family moved to the English mansion of Childwickbury, a mid-17th century estate with land covering almost 80,000 square meters and more than 100 rooms. There, according to legend, Kubrick would spend his last years hidden from the world, like a hermit, lurking behind the closed windows while he conceived his next great cinematic work. Nothing is further from reality. Christiane has defended that her husband is not the misogynistic and misanthropic man that many have painted him as, but rather an affable father and an intense and emotional conversationalist. Someone extremely sociable and who used to have a house full of guests. “He simply didn't like going to the trendy restaurants where all the famous people went to avoid being bothered. He hated traveling and had no reason to leave home, he could work from there because he had his studio,” the artist said. Childwickbury, just over an hour north of London, became a kind of “factory” in which both the artist and the director worked daily on their projects. “He was always very tolerant of my disorder as a painter,” she added. She is also responsible for taking care of her husband's cinematographic legacy along with her brother, Jan Harlan, producer of Kubrick's successive works after Paths of Glory.

In the stately mansion, under the shade of his favorite tree, the remains of Stanley Kubrick are buried today. Also those of his daughter Anya, who died in 2009 at the age of 50 due to cancer. The youngest, Vivian, who composed the soundtrack for The metal jacket, disowned his family to join the church of Scientology and has publicly shared his sympathy for the far-right and conspiracy theories of the Qanon movement that encouraged the assault on the United States Capitol. For her part, Ella Christiane remains dedicated to brushes in Childwickbury, where she has organized an annual art fair and Christmas market for the past two decades. Together with her third daughter Katharina, she also holds oil and watercolor painting courses once a month for neophytes in the field. The price of spending a weekend painting with Christiane and within the walls that Stanley Kubrick inhabited? 100 pounds, about 117 euros at the exchange rate. Of course, they warn that lunch and materials (“if you have any”) depend on the student. “Our classes are relaxed and friendly and we make everyone feel welcome and at ease,” she claims on her website. A relief for clumsy recruits.