Fear and Desire (1953)
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Fear and Desire Movie Review
Fear and Desire is a 1953 anti-war film directed by Stanley Kubrick. It was a cheap, lesser production which serves its purpose overall.
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“Well, we have nothing to lose but our futures“
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After their airplane crashes behind enemy lines, four soldiers must survive and try to find a way back to their battalion. However, when they come across a local peasant girl the horrors of war quickly become apparent. That’s the premise behind this debut movie for the acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick.
Apparently, Kubrick himself hated this film so much that he wanted it gone and never to be watched by anyone ever again. I find that to be an utter exaggeration as this flick is not bad by any means, but of course it’s far from his later efforts in terms of quality.
Watching this film as a precursor to his later classics and an important first setting stone, the film becomes rather impressive in a couple of sequences and especially technically. The girl tied to a tree, the narrated monologue over action and the extensive close-ups are some of the examples where the film truly is highly memorable, especially in terms of imagery and cinematography.
Yes, it’s incredibly well shot by the director himself, and overall it’s well scored as well. The film is technically very polished for such a tight budget, but everything else is very lacking. The acting isn’t the greatest, but especially the line-delivery was off the mark. And that dialogue can be very pretentious, especially in the final act.
Fear and Desire thus definitely represents the potential greatness for Kubrick as he would later of course fully realize, but only from the technical standpoint was he pretty good here. In terms of characterization, the film suffers as none of the guys are well developed at all.
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But especially in terms of the narrative does the movie really stumble. Yes, this is one of those films where it follows an unknown and not stated war which was problematic and too ambiguous, but it also has so many thematic and not just visual ideas that it really feels like the director wanted to cram as many things as possible into this very brief runtime of sixty minutes. Needless to say, it doesn’t work and it needed more depth and better handling of its themes.
In his debut film Fear and Desire, Kubrick definitely showcased his great potential through some very cinematic qualities despite a tight budget. The score is great, some of the imagery is memorable and the cinematography is pretty impressive with very interesting close-ups. But the film stumbles character-wise, acting-wise and especially in terms of the narrative as Kubrick crammed so many ideas and themes into a very brief runtime, leading to a messy, unfulfilled product.
