Kubrick's Salad Days: Fear and Desire

Fans and cinephiles well know the story about how Kubrick pulled all prints of his 1953 debut feature Fear and Desire from circulation. Referrng to it as "inept and pretentious", he genuinely wanted to prevent anyone from seeing it. He didn't entirely succeed, and a few prints still exist, including one at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. Though Filmbrain doesn't support the idea of removing works from the public eye, he can understand why Kubrick would want to make this one disappear. Though made the same year as the exceptional short Day of the Fight (review here), there's not a whole lot to praise in Fear and Desire. The film, which takes place in an imaginary time, during an imaginary war, finds a group of soldiers who are trapped behind enemy lines, and details their plan of escape. Filmbrain isn't going to mince words -- it's bad. Film-school bad. First off there is the screenplay, which, as Kubrick says, is indeed pretentious. Too much of the dialog is stream of consciousness -- we hear the overlapped internal monologues of the individual soldiers -- but it is a far cry from The Thin Red Line. These are the kind of pseudo-philosophical lines we all wrote at nineteen that we thought were brilliant. But weren't. Then there is the acting, especially the over-the-top performance by future director Paul Mazursky. Left alone with a woman the soldiers have abducted, Mazursky goes into a pitiful monologue that ends with him turning into a cackling madman -- it's almost too embarrassing to watch. The over-zealous editing is full of quick cuts for no good reason, while at other times the scenes feel oddly incomplete. What can be praised about the film is Kubrick's eye. There are some wonderful shots, several of which he would reuse in later films. (The photo in the middle, above, looks very much like a shot of General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove). There's a fight sequence that has close-ups of hands clutching straw as the men are being beaten that is very effective, and the final shots on the river (top right) are quite haunting. Yet in the end, this is a film only for hardcore Kubrick completists. Filmbrain hopes that one day Christiane Kubrick will allow Fear and Desire, and all of the shorts, to get a proper release.

Comments

[Matt]

"Film-school bad."

Excuse me?

[Filmbrain]

Oops....[pulling foot out of mouth].

Was afraid that would ruffle some feathers.

Of course I was referring to those fly-by-night film schools where individuals feel that they can make a film after 12 weeks of study.

(Kubrick never went to film school.)

My aplogies, Matt.

[Matt]

Don't worry. Like you, I was only kidding.

[Darren]

I briefly mentioned Fear and Desire in a short essay about Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, and my comments mirror yours pretty closely:

There’s often a refreshing fearlessness in the works of those artists who are still seeking a voice, who haven’t yet learned the rules and mastered the fundamentals. But that fearlessness is often matched by a naïve worldview and reckless ambition. Actually, in Kubrick’s case, I would go so far as to call that ambition hubris, as he and co-screenwriter Howard Sackler — who, like Kubrick was only in his mid-20s at the time — set out on a shoestring budget to make a film about “the two greatest motivating forces in human history,” or some such nonsense. Set in a fictional, dreamlike landscape amid a fictional, dreamlike conflict, Fear and Desire is a war picture drowning in banal allegory, notable only for its notoriety and for the occasional startling image that hints at all that would come in Kubrick’s five-decade career. I’m glad I saw it. Once.

[cjk]

The girl in the photo is Virginia Leith - who was brilliant and unforgetable as "Jan-in-the-pan" in THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. She was also in Gerd Oswald's A KISS BEFORE DYING (1956). Kudos to Kubrick for discovering her. How was she in FEAR AND DESIRE?

[Filmbrain]

That's "Jan-in-the-pan"? Too funny.

Hard to say how her performance is. She's tied to a tree and has to look frightened -- she does that pretty well, I guess.

I don't recall if she has any lines.

[Filmbrain]

I should add -- her acting is far better than any of the soldiers!

[Naomi]

Does any one have a copy of Kubrick's 'Day of the Fight'? Do you know where I can get it? I'd be willing to pay an appropriate fee. Thank you!
-N