Fear and Desire (1953)

Director:

Stanley Kubrick

Writer:

Howard Sackler (writer)

Release Date:

1 April 1953 (USA)

Genre:

War | Drama

Tagline:

Trapped... 4 Desperate Men and a Strange Half-Animal Girl! and the Story of French Prostitute... and The Male Brute

Plot:

Four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines must confront their fears and desires.

Cast

Frank Silvera	...	Sgt. Mac
Paul Mazursky	...	Pvt. Sidney
Kenneth Harp	...	Lt. Corby / enemy general
Stephen Coit	...	Pvt. Fletcher (aide-de-camp) (as Steve Coit)
Virginia Leith	...	Young Girl

Also Known As:

Shape of Fear (USA) (working title)
The Trap (USA) (original script title)
Medo E Desejo (Brazil) [pt]
Paura e desiderio (Italy) [it]

Runtime:

72 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

San Gabriel Mountains, California, USA

Company:

Kubrick

Trivia:

Kubrick later denounced this film as amateurish, saying he considered it like a child's drawing on a fridge.

Quotes:

Lieutenant Corby: We spend our lives running our fingers down the lists in directories, looking for our real names, our permanent addresses. No man is an island?
[chuckles softly]
Lieutenant Corby: Perhaps that was true a long time ago, before the Ice Age. The glaciers have melted away, and now we're all islands -- parts of a world made of islands only...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in True Romance (1993)

Not a complete artistic failure, but disappointing in one way I didn't expect

Stanley Kubrick, a director who I hold in the highest of esteems for his masterpieces (Clockwork Orange, 2001, The Killing, the Shining, Dr. Strangelove, etc) took the film out of circulation, leaving it to be found by only the hardcore fans and completists. After seeing the film for myself, I could see why. At the age of 24, Kubrick had already honed his craft of still photography for LOOK magazine, and had done a few short documentaries. Like many first-time filmmakers that came in the decades after him, his ambition for Fear and Desire was, in short, to just go and make a film, cheaply, more than likely to see if he could do it. On that level, he was successful. However, the film itself definitely is not.

I can't really say that the film is a failure because there was something I did like about it throughout. Even as the film's story went on the wayside, and the actors (whom Kubrick didn't have any idea how to direct, not being a man of the theater), his knack for producing and capturing some great images gets its seeds in this film. At times, there are some shots of close-ups and quick-shots in suspense/action scenes that are eye-catching. Unfortunately, this is all the good I can really say of the film. Although there are a couple of 'name' actors in the film (Frank Slivera, who also appeared in Killer's Kiss, and Paul Mazursky, a director in his own right), the performances overall are dull and very routine.

In fact, that is the film's main demise for me; whenever I watch any Kubrick film, even his early film noirs Killer's Kiss and the Killing, I can tell who made it, as his style by then became distinct, which would continue as he evolved as an artist. It wasn't 'artsy' like I might have pictured (which is usually the case with first-time directors like Scorsese and Spielberg), but watching this film not only did it feel like it wasn't Kubrick, it felt like a lot of the time I was watching some B (or even C) grade movie by a director that time forgot- not quite 'Ed Wood' bad, but close. The music is as standard as can be, the fades are pedestrian, and the plot seems to not really hold that much attention.

In short, as others have said and which I can agree, this is a "doodle pad" of a future ground-breaker, who shows some shots and a few edits that grab some attention (the best scene overall being when the soldiers take the dumb girl hostage), but not enough to really recommend except to those, like myself, who end up seeing everything by Kubrick (or, perhaps, have to see every ultra-low budget war film ever made), if only out of curiosity.