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Fear and Desire
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Fear and Desire
Fear and Desire is a 1952 American independent anti-war film directed, produced, and edited by Stanley Kubrick in his directorial debut, and written by Howard Sackler. With a production team of fifteen people, the film originally premiered at the Venice Film Festival, in a side program, 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.
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.
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 does not 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.
Prior to shooting Fear and Desire, Kubrick was a Look photographer who had directed two short documentaries in 1951, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre. Both films were acquired for theatrical release by RKO Radio Pictures. From his experiences in creating short films, Kubrick felt he was ready to make a narrative feature film. Kubrick quit his full-time job with Look and set forth to create Fear and Desire.
The screenplay was written by Howard Sackler, a classmate of Kubrick's at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, New York; Sackler later won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 drama The Great White Hope. Virginia Leith, who played The Girl in this film, went on to play Jan in the 1962 cult classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Paul Mazursky, who later received recognition as the director of such films as Harry and Tonto and An Unmarried Woman, was cast as the soldier who kills the captive peasant.
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Fear and Desire
Fear and Desire is a 1952 American independent anti-war film directed, produced, and edited by Stanley Kubrick in his directorial debut, and written by Howard Sackler. With a production team of fifteen people, the film originally premiered at the Venice Film Festival, in a side program, 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.
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.
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 does not 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.
Prior to shooting Fear and Desire, Kubrick was a Look photographer who had directed two short documentaries in 1951, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre. Both films were acquired for theatrical release by RKO Radio Pictures. From his experiences in creating short films, Kubrick felt he was ready to make a narrative feature film. Kubrick quit his full-time job with Look and set forth to create Fear and Desire.
The screenplay was written by Howard Sackler, a classmate of Kubrick's at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, New York; Sackler later won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 drama The Great White Hope. Virginia Leith, who played The Girl in this film, went on to play Jan in the 1962 cult classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Paul Mazursky, who later received recognition as the director of such films as Harry and Tonto and An Unmarried Woman, was cast as the soldier who kills the captive peasant.