Kubrick began his career as an independent filmmaker when he made Day of the Fight… Deciding to revisit his work on his Prizefighter photo essay, Kubrick contacted the Cartier twins (Vincent Cartier was Walter’s manager) and quickly gained their co-operation. He spent time with them, followed their daily routine and then filmed it… Day of the Fight is remarkably accomplished for a first film. As well as the superb photography and framing, there are stylistic touches that show, in retrospect, that Kubrick had emerged fully formed as a filmmaker…
There is a sequence in Day of the Fight where the Cartier twins walk towards us and the camera moves backwards. This reverse tracking shot, as it is known, is one of Kubrick’s most recognisable camera movements and is used in every movie. It implies that the walker is thrusting, dynamic, decisive, in control and powerful. During the fight between Cartier and Bobby James, Kubrick threw his hand into the ring and filmed the punching from the point of view of the canvas. In contrast to the controlled, stately shots that are associated with him, Kubrick often used his journalistic training to shoot blind or to get opportunistic shots from unusual angles…
Flying Padre is a slick, professional piece of work about the Reverend Fred Stadtmueller who, the voiceover tells us, travels by plane because his 11 churches are situated in 4,000 square miles of territory… However, Kubrick manages to sneak a few of his own touches into the eight minutes. There are many views of the airplane, and from the airplane, that are later echoed in the almost fetishistic depiction of spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The close-ups of faces at the funeral are reminiscent of the style of Sergei Eisenstein, whose work Kubrick studied intensely at this time…
The Seafarers was a 30-minute promotional film for the Seafarers International Union. It was Kubrick’s first film in colour. Supervised by the “Seafarers Log” (the union magazine), Kubrick’s role as cinematographer and director was to follow the script and make it look interesting. The film is devoid of cinematic tricks, but it does have a scene at the end when a speaker gives an impassioned talk from the podium as the labourers look on. This montage of speaker and  audience echoes similar chest-thumping scenes in Strike (1924) and October (1927), which were directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

Paul Duncan, Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films, Taschen, Cologne 2003