Fear and Desire (1953)

Very disappointing...

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

For those curious to view this early effort from Kubrick, a beautiful print can now be streamed via Amazon Prime. I can understand why Kubrick wanted to destroy any prints of this -- it's an amateurish effort that doesn't begin to hint at the great films to come. Still, for film freaks, it's a curiosity that's hard to resist.By the way -- that exploitive pink poster image attached to this page is amazing in its lack of any accurate sense of the film!

Interesting subject. More interesting to know that Kubrick and Mazursky were buddies when both were unknown. The opening and ending shots are the same conforming to Aristotelian aesthetics.

The reason that this film got such a poor reception from American movie-goers in 1953 is because, in my opinion, they were incapable of understanding it. Fear And Desire in 1953, would have had much greater commercial success in Continental Europe, especially in France. The Hollywood saturated American audiences of 1953 were conditioned to expect a much different "war movie" than Fear And Desire. European audiences would have immediately recognized it for what is truly is, an Art Film.This film has high artistic merit The cinematography and editing are excellent. The use of montage in this film is very effective.The very small cast of carefully selected and well crafted distinct personality types makes for tight interaction patterns with great symbolic significance.Overall, I'd call this an Existential film that reflects on many aspects of the human condition. That it is superficially set in a war context is only a theatrical ploy against which is investigated the deeper issues concerning human existence in general.The occasional "silent monologue" of the various characters, representing their innermost, most intimate thoughts is an effective plumb into the personality and the life situation of a particular character at a given point in the story line.Although three of the four stranded soldiers are dressed in combat uniforms, all four appear to be "green" and unaccustomed to the realities of combat situations. This combat naivete accentuates their emotional and visceral reactions to the situations in the film where they have to kill enemy soldiers and in their interaction with the peasant girl that they capture.That the viewer is told by the narrator at the very beginning this "war film" that the circumstances regarding the nations involved in the war and the specifics of the theater of this war in which this film takes place are rather "anonymous" and completely unspecified highlights the fact that this film is not at all about actual war itself. The "war" in this film is symbolic of the "war" that we all must navigate through our individual- lives as we traverse the path of Self and Other.

With a setting of a non-distinct time, country and people, this represents, and explores, war. A plane with four military men crashes several miles behind enemy lines. The situation is tense, tempers run high... and then a young woman spots them(oh, and this fails the Bechdel test rather spectacularly; more than anything, she's a catalyst), and they stop her from running. They may have to keep her as a hostage - after all, they can't let her warn the enemy general in the house not far from their position...The characters are the hardened Sgt. Mac(Silvera, determined to do something that will matter), the nervous Private Sidney(Mazursky, anxious), the pilot Pvt. Flethcer(Coit, suave, the airman, with the underlying idea that he isn't as brave as the others, the army men) and Lt. Corby(Harp, one caught in the middle). They respond differently to the danger - sarcasm, assigning blame, philosophizing, etc. Rank, identity, strategy and planning come up. Can one remain "civilized" during this extreme state? This also goes into perspective, the needs of the few vs. those of the many. The acting is good. There is some meaningful voice-over by an all-knowing narrator.This is nowhere near the level of the later work of Kubrick(R.I.P.), but it is very clearly one of his films. It does put his, at the time, lack of experience, on full display: the editing is slightly awkward(albeit not uninspired - one part has blood and violence shown via food being spilt and crumpled), the quick cuts to and from faces are too brief to have an effect, and there is not much camera movement, sometimes too little. This is also not as detached, with wide shots, as his later works. The running time is 58 minutes sans end credits, and the pacing is uneven, you lose interest every so often, and the conclusion peters out more than it leaves us on a compelling note. As far as availability, I watched this via my local library.Parts of this are genuinely disturbing and unpleasant, raw and brutal. I recommend this to the biggest fans of the director, as a curiosity. 6/10