Cast:
Frank Silvera (Sgt. Mac), Kenneth Harp (Lt. Corby / The General), Paul Mazursky (Pvt. Sidney), Steve Coit (Pvt. Fletcher / The Captain), with Virginia Leith (The Girl), and David Allen (Narrator) Produced and Directed by Stanley Kubrick (#044 - Full Metal Jacket, #065 - The Shining, #093 - 2001: A Space Odyssey, #1046 - Barry Lyndon, #1301 - Dr. Strangelove, and #1440 - A Clockwork Orange)
Review:
"I don't know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a better film than that." [c. 1950s]
Stanley Kubrick directed his first feature film with Fear and Desire at the age of 24 and later called it "a bumbling amateur film exercise". I would say that is possibly all you need to see the film for itself, if only because the ridiculous acts of Kubrick in trying to bury the film (which included calling the film awful when it was going to be commercially screened for the first time in decades in 1994) has made it something to look about when talking about Kubrick before he was known as Kubrick. Of course, he made rookie mistakes as any filmmaker could do, but most probably don't try to use crop sprayers to create fog only to nearly choke people when insecticide was found to be still inside. It also helps that the film is in the public domain and is also his shortest film at 61 minutes. It was originally shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1952 as "Shape of Fear" only to see distribution by Joseph Burstyn in 1953 (months before his death at the age of 53) under the title it is now known as. Kubrick had been born in New York City and was raised in the Bronx, where his interest in film and photography became apparent from an early age. After spending time as a photographer for Look magazine Kubrick became a director with three documentaries in Day of the Fight (1951), Flying Padre (1951), and The Seafarers (1953). The results of showing his films around got Kubrick some finances to try and make a feature film, with his uncle Martin Perveler contributing his key part. Howard Sackler, a friend of Kubrick and a future playwright (most notably The Great White Hope), wrote the screenplay. The film was shot over the course of a couple of weeks with a crew totaling just over a dozen people in the San Gabriel Mountains of California. Kubrick also shot and edited the film himself with the intent to make it a silent film, but this would change (which resulted in him making a deal with Richard De Rochemont in funding). The film did not receive great audience returns, but there were a few decent reviews Two years after the release of the film, Kubrick would direct his second film with Killer's Kiss, a crime film noir which he wrote with Sackler.
There is something to be said about a film like this that achieves a curiosity in such pictorial oddness. It is a strange film, one that is distinct in of itself from the future twelve films to come from such an interesting presence. What is there to say about a group of men and the conscious acts they make that compare with what is said on screen? Plenty, if the movie has anything to say for an argument. Sure, there is a plot about an assassination of an officer in this unnamed war that they are dealing with, but the real attraction is looking at these people up close in their attempt to not go up the river mentally and in a figurative sense. Any film that begins with narration that has lines such as "These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time but have no other country but the mind" can only inspire one to treat the film as a sort of odd fever dream. It is the kind of film that lives and dies on just how much of it you buy into, if only because it isn't the sort of with any great performances or definitive answers on the basis of fear. With that in mind for such a mechanical curiosity, I think it works out just fine. Danger, risk, desperation, being built for war or not, it all is a blur that is handled with weird touch from actors such as Mazursky, who has his most noted moment when trying to handle his delirium at being the only one in view of the one found captive in Leith or in the double-act played to general patience by Harp or Coit. Silvera is no slouch of course, with his pursuit for one great act of courage in the face of certain end being a curious one to let itself play out. As a whole, it is a curious film wrapped in a puddle of fear and expression that obviously shows the potential for its director rather than serving as an avoidable exercise, and it should be celebrated for the useful execution that squeezes by rather than left in the dust.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
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