Very well executed

Pretty Good

Awesome Movie

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Despite hearing nothing but negative things about 'Fear and Desire', as somebody who considers Stanley Kubrick one of the greatest directors who ever lived I thought to myself "surely a lesser Kubrick film would have a lot of merit and be better than most directors' worst".Finally seeing it, this reviewer really does have to agree that 'Fear and Desire' is a misfire. It is by far Kubrick's worst film, and the only film of his I personally consider bad. The only good things here are some great use of light and shadow and in particular some beautifully done camera work, the one components that showed effort.Kubrick's inexperience badly shows here, very little of his distinctive directorial style showing. Other than the camera work, there is little of the finesse of what would come later with Kubrick's succeeding films. Particularly bad is the editing, which is awkward and borders on self-indulgent.The story, despite being a very short film, is very paper thin and stretched which gives it a very tedious feel. Kubrick's shortest film actually feels like one of his longest. The music is shrill and overbearing, not really adding anything to the atmosphere, it has been described here by a commentator as a bad Bernard Hermann imitation and this reviewer cannot disagree. The characters have no development or progression, most of them even with little personality. Also found myself irritated by the character of Sidney.'Fear and Desire's' worst assets are the acting and the script. The acting is all round terrible, some ham up, especially Paul Mazursky, and others sleepwalk through their roles. The script is atrocious, with supposedly profound narration that's overused, annoying and confusing.All in all, worth looking for historical interest but if you want to see a film to see for yourself why Kubrick was so revered 'Fear and Desire' is not it. 2/10 Bethany Cox

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

This is the only Kubrick non-documentary I had not seen so, in spite of having read many negative comments (even from Kubrick himself), I figured I needed to see it. I have a hard time finding anything good to say about it--the acting, story, and music are decidedly sub-par. Usually there is some hint of things to come in the early works of most geniuses. Think of Orson Welles when he made "Citizen Kane"--he was about the same age as Kubrick when Kubrick made "Fear and Desire." Welles did make the comment that he began at the top and worked his way down, quite the opposite from Kubrick. How Kubrick could come back from "Fear and Desire" to direct "Paths of Glory" only four years later is hard to fathom. It would be like Einstein not being able to handle simple algebra in 1900 and then coming up with special relativity in 1905.At just over an hour this has the look of an early, and forgettable, television drama. As director, producer, cinematographer, and editor this is pretty much a wholly owned Kubrick effort. No wonder he tried to suppress its release.

The excellence of one aspect of this film needs be better noted: The cinematography, the use of light and shadow. The photography. Kubrick handled it all like a pro. Not the direction, he really didn't know what he was doing except to make the thing look as avant-garde (it doesn't) as the script pretends it is (it isn't). There are a few recognizable flashes of ability at direction, as when he places the camera shooting up into the face of the soldier on the raft as it moves along the riverbank, you feel you're in the hands of a master, or at one point inside the general's HQ as he sits in the shadows at the table, which could easily have been edited into the war room of Dr Strangelove. Too bad he was unable to rewrite the script to make it less oblique (it shoots for student-level artsy-craftsy, killing any chance it had at being viewed without wincing). But the images can be said to be beautifully rendered. In his first attempt at it at 24, he had to have been satisfied with the transference of his skill at still photography to film. There are snippets that rival anything shot by Sven Nykvist in his heyday, unfortunately edited by him to flash by too quickly. When we focus on the skill he exhibited juxtaposing light and shadow, it makes this film enjoyable and we the more thankful he lacked the skill to destroy it.