Fear and Desire
Fear and Desire | |
---|---|
Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
Written by | Howard Sackler |
Produced by | Stanley Kubrick |
Starring |
|
Narrated by | David Allen |
Cinematography | Stanley Kubrick |
Edited by | Stanley Kubrick |
Music by | Gerald Fried |
Distributed by | Joseph Burstyn |
Release dates | August 1952, Venice Film Festival (premiere)
|
Running time | 61 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $39,000–$53,000[1][2] |
Fear and Desire is a 1952 American independent[4] anti-war film directed, produced, and edited by Stanley Kubrick (in his directorial debut), and written by Howard Sackler.[5][6] With a production team of fifteen people, the film, which originally premiered at the Venice Film Festival under the title Shape of Fear. Though the film is not about any specific war, it was produced and released at the height of the Korean War.
Plot
Fear and Desire opens with an off-screen narration by actor David Allen who tells the audience:
There is a war in this forest. Not a war that has been fought, nor one that will be, but any war. And the enemies who struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. This forest then, and all that happens now is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time, but have no other country but the mind.[7]
The story is set during a war between two unidentified countries. An airplane carrying four soldiers from one country has crashed six miles behind enemy lines. The soldiers come upon a river and build a raft, hoping they can use the waterway to reach their battalion. They meet and befriend a dog, and then, as they are building their raft, spot a house a distance away. Using binoculars, they spot a general occupying the house. When they see a plane overhead they go further into the woods, come upon a small house with enemy soldiers eating, and break in to kill them for their food and rifles.
The next day they leave and are approached by a young peasant girl who does not speak their language. The soldiers apprehend the girl and bind her to a tree with their belts. The youngest of them, Sidney, is left behind to guard the girl. He starts to talk to her, but as she doesn't understand him, he descends into a state of delirium. When he unbelts her, believing she will embrace him, she tries to escape and Sidney shoots her dead. Mac, another of the four soldiers, finds the dead girl and Sidney, who has gone mad. Sidney runs off towards the river.
Mac persuades the commander, Lt. Corby, and Fletcher to let him take the raft for a solo voyage, and they plan to kill the enemy general at the nearby base. Mac distracts the general's guards by shooting at them while on the raft, and is himself wounded. While this is happening, Fletcher and Corby successfully infiltrate the base, kill the general, and use an enemy plane to escape to their home base. After landing, they talk and eat with their own general, and return to the river to await Mac. Sitting there, they philosophize about war and how no man is made for it, before finding the raft floating downriver, with a dying Mac and a delirious Sidney.[8]
Cast
- David Allen as Narrator
- Frank Silvera as Sgt. Mac
- Kenneth Harp as Lt. Corby / The General
- Paul Mazursky as Pvt. Sidney
- Steve Coit as Pvt. Fletcher / The Captain
- Virginia Leith as The Girl
Production
Prior to shooting Fear and Desire, Kubrick was a
The screenplay was written by
Funds for Fear and Desire were raised from Kubrick's family and friends, with most of it coming from Martin Perveler, Kubrick's uncle and the owner of a profitable pharmacy.[11] The film's original budget has been estimated at $10,000.[5]
The production team consisted of 14 people: the director, five actors (Paul Mazursky, Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Steve Coit, and Virginia Leith), five crew members (including Kubrick's first wife, Toba Metz) and three Mexican laborers who transported the film equipment around California's San Gabriel Mountains, where the film was shot. Due to budget limitations, Kubrick improvised in the use of his equipment. To create fog, Kubrick used a crop sprayer, but the cast and crew was nearly asphyxiated because the machinery still contained the insecticide used for its agricultural work.[12] For tracking shots, Paul Mazursky recalled how Kubrick came up with a novel substitute: "There was no dolly track, just a baby carriage to move the camera", he told an interviewer.[11]
To reduce production costs, Kubrick had intended to make it a silent picture, but in the end the adding of sounds, effects and music brought the production over budget to around $53,000,[13] and had to be bailed out by producer Richard de Rochemont, on condition that he help in de Rochemont's production of a five-part program about Abraham Lincoln for the educational TV series Omnibus, filmed on location in Hodgenville, Kentucky.[14] Kubrick also ran into difficulty in editing a key scene where one of the soldiers throws a plate of beans to the floor and enters the frame from the wrong side. Kubrick's blocking of the crucial scene was faulty, and his actors accidentally crossed the so-called "stage line"; this required the negative to be flipped in the printing process to preserve continuity, which was another expense.[15]
Release
The film was first shown at the Venice Film Festival in August 1952 under the title Shape of Fear. It was later picked up for U.S. theatrical release by Joseph Burstyn, a distributor and war veteran who specialized in the presentation of European art house titles.[16] The film was renamed Fear and Desire and was distributed with the tagline "Trapped ... 4 Desperate Men and a Strange Half-Animal Girl!"[17] In an uncredited review following the New York premiere, The New York Times noted: "If Fear and Desire is uneven and sometimes reveals an experimental rather than a polished exterior, its overall effect is entirely worthy of the sincere effort put into it."[18]
Critical response
Kubrick received praise for Fear and Desire from film critic and screenwriter James Agee, who reportedly took Kubrick out for a drink and told him, "There are too many good things ... to call [Fear and Desire] arty."[7] Columbia University professor Mark Van Doren sent Kubrick a letter that stated: "The incident of the girl bound to the tree will make movie history once it is seen ... Stanley Kubrick is worth watching for those who want to discover high talent at the moment it appears."[19]
Fear and Desire was not a box office success, and Kubrick had to take a for-hire job directing the promotional short
Disappearance and rediscovery
In the years following its release, Fear and Desire seemed to have disappeared. Distributor Joseph Burstyn died in November 1953 on a trans-Atlantic flight, and his company went out of business. Legend has it that Kubrick destroyed the film's original negative and sought to do the same to any leftover prints after the failed film fell out of circulation following Burstyn's death.[20] However, some prints of the film remained in private collections.[21]
Fear and Desire had its first retrospective screening at the 1993
There have been very few public screenings of Fear and Desire; the only commercially available print belongs to the
In 2010, an original copy of the film was discovered at a Puerto Rican film laboratory.[25]
On December 14, 2011, Turner Classic Movies aired a print restored by George Eastman House.
References
- ^ Gelmis, Joseph (1970). The Film Director as Superstar. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. p. xiv.
- ^ Stafford, Jeff. "Fear and Desire (1953) – Articles". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
- ^ "Fear and Desire (1953)". youtube.
Copyright expired, the film remains in public domain... Includes a five-minute interview with the director about the film.
- ^ The Criterion Channel's July 2023 Lineup|Current|The Criterion Collection
- ^ ISBN 978-3-8228-3115-1
- ^ "Biennale Cinema 2022 | Stanley Kubrick's first film, Fear and Desire, at the 1952 Venice Film Festival". La Biennale di Venezia. 2022-06-08. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
- ^ a b Sperb, Jason (September 22, 2004). ""The country of the mind in Kubrick's Fear and Desire. (Movie Review)," Film Criticism Magazine, September 22, 2004 (library card access required)". Film Criticism. Archived from the original on 2009-01-12. Retrieved 2016-01-08.
- ^ a b "Fear and Desire, Film Threat, May 7, 2003". Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2016-01-09.
- ^ Jonas, Marty. "Stanley Kubrick—an appreciation". wsws.org.
- ^ "Virginia Leith, Star of 'The Brain That Wouldn't Die,' Dies at 94". The Hollywood Reporter. 12 November 2019.
- ^ a b Guthmann, Edward (July 17, 1999). ""The Ones That (Almost) Got Away," San Francisco Chronicle, July 18, 1999". The San Francisco Chronicle.
- ^ ""The New Pictures," Time, June 4, 1956". June 4, 1956. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008. Retrieved May 2, 2010.
- ^ Baxter 1997, p. 50.
- ^ Duncan 2003, p. 26-27.
- ISBN 0-7864-0194-X
- ISBN 0-253-21390-8
- ^ "Fear and Desire: The Movie Stanley Kubrick Didn't Want You to See". www.mentalfloss.com. April 6, 2017.
- ^ "Fear and Desire, Tale of War Fashioned by Young Film Newcomers, at Guild". New York Times. April 1, 1953.
- ISBN 0-306-80906-0.
- ^ "Fear and Desire: The Movie Stanley Kubrick Didn't Want You to See". 2017-04-06. Retrieved 2018-07-23.
- ^ ""Here's wishing these DVDs would soon hit the shelves", Observer-Reporter, November 14, 2003 (fee access required)". Observer-Reporter. November 14, 2003.
- ^ McCarthy, Todd (September 10, 1993). ""1.Dark subjects can't blight artists' light at Telluride", Variety, September 10, 1993".
- ^ ""Fear & Desire Plays New York," National Public Radio, January 19, 1994 (transcript)".
- ^ ""PROFILE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TO SHOW RARELY SEEN STANLEY KUBRICK FILMS ON JULY 26th, WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS 71ST BIRTHDAY", NPR, July 15, 1999, (fee-based access)". Nl.newsbank.com. 1999-07-15. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
- ^ e-TF1. "Fear and Desire: le premier film de Kubrick retrouvé! – Les actus Cinéma". Excessif. Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Fear and Desire Blu-ray. blu-ray.com
Bibliography
- Baxter, John (1997). Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-638445-8.
- Duncan, Paul (2003). Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films. Taschen GmbH. ISBN 978-3-8365-2775-0.
Further reading
- Kagan, Norman (2000). The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1243-2.
- Naremore, James (2007). On Kubrick. British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1-84457-142-0.
- Sperb, Jason (2006). The Kubrick Facade: Faces and Voices in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 081085855X.
- Hughes, David (2000). The Complete Kubrick. Virgin Publishing. ISBN 0-7535-0452-9.
External links
- Fear and Desire at IMDb
- Fear and Desire on YouTube
- Fear and Desire on YouTube
- Fear and Desire at AllMovie
- Fear and Desire at Rotten Tomatoes