Fear and Desire
Trapped… 4 desperate men and a strange half-animal girl!
Country
Production
Budget
$53 000
Box office
$0
Director
Actors
Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Paul Mazursky, Stephen Coit, Virginia Leith, David Allen
All actors and roles (6)
All actors and roles (6)
Scenario
Producer
Camera operator
Composer
Gerald Fried
Artist
Audition
Editing
Short description
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.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film was the directorial debut of Stanley Kubrick and was considered lost for a long time.
- The screenplay for the film was written by Kubrick's schoolmate (from William Taft High School) Howard Sackler.
- The film's production was funded from the personal funds of the Kubrick family and their friends. The largest contribution came from Kubrick's uncle, Martin Plover, who owned a profitable pharmacy.
- The film crew consisted of only 15 people: Stanley Kubrick, five actors (Virginia Leight, Paul Mazursky, Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, and Stephen Coit), five cinematographers (including Kubrick's first wife, Toba Metz), and four Mexican laborers who transported the filming equipment through the San Gabriel Mountains of California, where the film was shot.
- Years after its release, the film was considered lost. Kubrick made considerable efforts to withdraw all known copies of the film so that no one would ever see it again. However, some copies of the film were preserved in private collections. In later years, Kubrick himself was embarrassed when the film was mentioned, referring to it as an amateur work.
- By the time filming of 'Fear and Desire' began, Kubrick was a staff photographer for 'Look' magazine, having shot several newsreels in the early 1950s. His early films were made to order by RKO Radio Pictures and were often shown before screenings in cinemas. Drawing on his experience with documentary films, Kubrick decided to try his hand at feature films. To facilitate filming, he reduced his working hours at 'Look' magazine.
- Due to the limited budget of the film, Kubrick had to improvise with the filming equipment. For example, to create the effect of fog, he used an agricultural sprayer. Its use almost suffocated the crew, as the device dispersed insecticide used solely for agricultural work. According to Paul Mazursky’s recollections, Kubrick used rail replacement for smooth camera movements and dissolves: “He didn’t have a dolly, just a baby carriage for moving the camera,” Mazursky mentioned in one interview.
- During post-production, Kubrick encountered a number of further problems. He shot the film completely without sound, hoping to add dubbing and accompanying sound effects later. However, adding sound increased the cost of processing the film. To cover the unforeseen expenses, Kubrick volunteered to shoot a film about the life of Abraham Lincoln for television. Difficulties also arose during the editing of a key scene, when a soldier throws a plate of beans on the floor and enters the frame from the wrong side. Kubrick did not pay attention either to the failure of the scene or to the fact that the actors stepped over the conditional “director’s line,” which was necessary to flip the negative during editing (to maintain continuity); all of this required additional expenses.
- The original copy of the film was discovered in a Puerto Rican film laboratory. The film’s first retrospective screening took place at the Telluride Film Festival in 1993. In January 1994, the 'Film Forum' cinema, a non-profit cinema in Lower Manhattan, announced plans to show a double feature of the film with 'Kiss Me Deadly'. Although the copyright on the film had expired and it had entered the public domain, allowing screenings without the threat of a lawsuit, Kubrick still tried to convince the public that the film had no value. Through Warner Brothers, he made a statement that sharply downplayed the film's worth, calling 'Fear and Desire' an 'awkward amateurish semblance of a film'.
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