1953's "Fear and Desire" was the feature length film debut for director Stanley Kubrick. It's earned a reputation as "the film Kubrick wanted erased", and has subsequently incurred a bad rap from film buffs. While it's no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, I believe that there is some amount of defense to be made for this misunderstood movie. One has to remember that Kubrick was only 25 years old at the time, he had limited experience as a semi-professional photographer and the director of two short documentaries, and this film was also made on a limited budget of around $53,000. These setbacks, coupled with some production issues such as the fact that they had to re-dub all of the dialogue due to having a poor microphone when filming, make this a very rough film. But it isn't without some redeemable qualities.
"Fear and Desire" tells us the story of four soldiers fighting for an unnamed army during an unnamed war who are trapped behind enemy lines as they struggle to find their way back into friendly territory. Along the way, they encounter a local girl, and they also scheme to assassinate an enemy general. It's as simple as that. With a run time of around 62 minutes, this film often feels like it might as well be an episode of an old TV show, or a made-for-TV movie. It's extremely rough around the edges, with some of the performances being super hokey and just plain bad. Overly-pretentious Shakespearean inner monologues about the incredibly weak characters' states of being are just laughably cheesy. There are some jump cuts that feel really out of place. The worst crime that this movie commits though, in my opinion, is that nothing really exciting happens. Like I said earlier, the movie is only about an hour long. But so much of the run time is just filled with the characters bickering about what they want to do, and there's a really forced psychological "freak out" made by one of the main characters at one point which feels like it comes out of the blue.
It's not an exceptional movie by any means, but the one thing that I will give it is the fact that some of the camera work looks pretty dang good for the era and the budget. There are a lot of nice close-up shots and POV shots that give us a small glimpse into what Kubrick would later achieve. Maybe a score of 6 is too high considering how deeply I dug into this movie to point out its major flaws, but I still consider it mildly entertaining and worth checking out as a curiosity in terms of the origins of one of the greatest directors of all time. The cinematography of the picture alone is worth checking it out. Dialogue, acting, and plot are all pretty poor, but they're serviceable enough to keep it from being an outright terrible film.
"Fear and Desire" tells us the story of four soldiers fighting for an unnamed army during an unnamed war who are trapped behind enemy lines as they struggle to find their way back into friendly territory. Along the way, they encounter a local girl, and they also scheme to assassinate an enemy general. It's as simple as that. With a run time of around 62 minutes, this film often feels like it might as well be an episode of an old TV show, or a made-for-TV movie. It's extremely rough around the edges, with some of the performances being super hokey and just plain bad. Overly-pretentious Shakespearean inner monologues about the incredibly weak characters' states of being are just laughably cheesy. There are some jump cuts that feel really out of place. The worst crime that this movie commits though, in my opinion, is that nothing really exciting happens. Like I said earlier, the movie is only about an hour long. But so much of the run time is just filled with the characters bickering about what they want to do, and there's a really forced psychological "freak out" made by one of the main characters at one point which feels like it comes out of the blue.
It's not an exceptional movie by any means, but the one thing that I will give it is the fact that some of the camera work looks pretty dang good for the era and the budget. There are a lot of nice close-up shots and POV shots that give us a small glimpse into what Kubrick would later achieve. Maybe a score of 6 is too high considering how deeply I dug into this movie to point out its major flaws, but I still consider it mildly entertaining and worth checking out as a curiosity in terms of the origins of one of the greatest directors of all time. The cinematography of the picture alone is worth checking it out. Dialogue, acting, and plot are all pretty poor, but they're serviceable enough to keep it from being an outright terrible film.