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.
Furcht und Begierde, Medo e Desejo, Վախ և Ցանկություն, Paura e desiderio, Fear and desire (Miedo y deseo), 恐惧与欲望, Страх и вожделение, פחד ותשוקה, Félelem és vágy, Miedo y Deseo, 恐懼和欲望, Korku ve Arzu, 공포와 욕망, 恐怖と欲望, Strach a touha, Страх та жадання
Italy
Venice Film Festival
FinlandK-12
USANR
Sweden11
USANR
Finland
Italy
Sweden
USA
This is the typical film that you desire to make in film school. You have watched poetic, foreign directors, and now you want to copy their style and make your own film. When you finish the script, you are sure it’ll be a masterpiece. You have the whole film up in your mind. That camera angle will be like that. He’ll say that line like that. It will a masterpiece, no doubt. Then pre-production start, you find out that you cannot cast a Cary Grant type for the lead. No Rita Hayworth for the female part. You cast horrible actors, but those were the only ones who showed up at casting, and their salary is low. You suddenly stop caring…
Fear and desire is a good name for this film because I approached it with a similar mindset—I desired what it could offer me with its existential themes, but I also feared exactly what had been said about it. And well... all the criticism is valid.
So, at first, it’s really tedious watch, even though it’s only an hour long. But what I want to highlight—and what earns all the stars—is the film’s unique and strong depth that it strives for. Kubrick’s own thoughts are definitely present in this confrontation, but the film constantly suffocates itself as I try to watch the battle between human desires, cynicism, and despair.
I love that Kubrick described this as a child’s drawing on…
From the filmmaking standards of director Stanley Kubrick, Fear & Desire is a terrible film. As a debut feature however, there are much worse examples out there. The film functions more like an experiment gone wrong which is why one can understand why Kubrick himself tried to acquire all its prints in order to prevent it from ever being seen again.
Set in an unspecified country where a fictitious war is brewing, the story follows four desperate soldiers trapped behind enemy lines and covers their plan of making it back to friendly territory. But their decision to build a raft & float back under the cover of nightfall is sidetracked when they are discovered by a young woman which ultimately forces these…
Stanley Kubrick’s debut feature-length is an uninteresting spectacle that can only manage to capture your interest because it was something made by Kubrick, himself. Apparently it’s his film as a student, which certainly seems like it. It only contains a slight glimpse of that Kubrick touch we all know and love today. Even so, it’s not worth recommending unless you want to get your Kubrick bingo. Most of it feels boring, amateurish, and half-baked.
O gênio do cinema Stanley Kubrick iniciou sua brilhante carreira com um filme... bem fraco comparado às obras de arte que ele produziu posteriormente. Apesar disso, o filme aborda um tema que seria muito bem desenvolvido ao longo de sua filmografia. A trama, que ocorre durante uma guerra, acompanha soldados perdidos em uma floresta após sofrerem um acidente aéreo. Em território inimigo, apenas algumas milhas atrás da linha de combate, eles precisam fugir, enfrentando inúmeros problemas para isso.
Eventualmente, os personagens tentam escapar em uma balsa, mas alguns deles decidem matar um general que vive em uma casa nas proximidades. Mais tarde, eles capturam uma moça encontrada na floresta, e um dos soldados, que enlouqueceu, deixa-a escapar e acaba por…
We all make mistakes
Action! - Three Auteurs: Stan and the Thousand Ku(t)bricks
Stanley Kubrick’s debut feature film is rough around the edges and not as well-crafted as the director’s later efforts. However, after my second viewing, many of the editing and script problems aren’t as bothersome as they were the first time. Although the filmmaker occasionally overuses close-ups and the screenplay is a little lackluster in the end, I can at least respect the endeavor and ideas that Kubrick was aiming for in the latter, both in the narrative and in capturing much of the psychology of the characters with these close shots. The camerawork is also rather competent. The music is great and successfully accentuates much of the film’s psychology. The performances…
"Fear and Desire" was Kubrick's first,
Something he considers his "worst".
What was really weird,
The film "disappeared",
Luckily some private copies were dispersed.
Decades Project: 5/5 of the 50's
"No more Sundays."
Fear and Desire is the feature debut of cinematic super genius Stanley Kubrick, and the real mark of his intelligence is that he tried to have every copy of it destroyed. There are some evocative visual compositions (foreshadowing his penchant for creative cinematography) and the screenplay tries to be an allegory for the psychological trauma of war (themes he would return to later in his filmography), but even though it hints at the masterpieces yet to come, for the most part the movie is simply awful.
The acting in particular is just the worst. Of course, it's not really the actors' fault: Kubrick himself acknowledges in interviews that he had absolutely…
A chore for completist cinephiles since time immemorial. Its opening narration alludes to the notion of a war taking place beyond the borders of time and space as we understand them, but that existentially tantalizing idea is quickly abandoned in favor of a logically constructed but regrettably dull morality play. Although Kubrick’s technical skills often distinguish it from other cheapo men-on-a-mission movies of this ilk, its place in history as “a titan’s debut feature” can only inspire disappointment. I certainly never expected to rewatch it, but on the plus side, my stream looked much better than the YouTube rip I sat through back in 2010.
“Well, we have nothing to lose but our futures.“
This is Stanley Kubrick’s first movie and apparently he disliked it so much that he tried to destroy it. Having seen many of his other movies I understand why he wasn’t satisfied with this one but it was still fine for a first movie with such a low budget.
The movie was short but still a bit slow and unengaging. I never cared for the story or the characters and I was a bit bored with it.
The editing was weird and unprofessional, while it also annoyed me that the voices were dubbed afterwards, since it made everything sound weird.
The movie had some nice shots and the acting was fine I guess but the movie really didn’t have many interesting moments.
"If you have to hate me, please try to like me also."
During a war, an airplane crashes behind enemy lines, and the survivors of the crash, four soldiers, set out to find a way back home, past the enemy ...
Fear and Desire is a war film directed by Stanley Kubrick (in his feature film debut), who also photographed and edited the film.
After two successful documentary short films, Kubrick moved on to make his first narrative feature film. He was still very much developing as a filmmaker, so don't expect too much from it.
Produced with a small team and a very low budget, Kubrick had to improvise while filming Fear and Desire. While it was well received,…
