Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 21 May

Fear and Desire (Kubrick, 1953)

If you’re wondering why I would recommend a film where the filmmaker himself tried to burn every available copy all I can say is – plaintively – there is a virtue to completeness.

Fear and Desire was Stanley Kubrick’s debut feature film. Up to then, he’d been a well-regarded photographer for Look magazine and had made two short documentaries, but this was to be his calling card. The initial budget of only $10,000 was found from family – most from his pharmacist uncle Martin Perveler – but the final cost was closer to $55,000, no doubt contributing to Kubrick’s feelings about the finished film.

It’s an existential war film, set in no particular conflict but released at the height of the Korean War. We meet four servicemen who are trapped several miles behind enemy lines after their transport plane crashes. They have one weapon between them and little experience. Each is an archetype of a sort. The lieutenant (Kenneth Corby) is philosophical, Sgt. Mac (Frank Silvera) is a man of action, determined to leave some kind of mark on this war, Private Sidney (a baby Paul Mazursky in his first screen role) is an innocent who is losing touch with whatever discipline he came into the war with, and Private Fletcher (Steve Coit) appears to be there to make up the numbers.

Over the course of the picture they decide to make a raft and float back to their own lines under cover of darkness, attack an enemy sentry post to steal their food and some weapons, identify a relatively unguarded airfield where an enemy general might be vulnerable to attack and – most famously and most upsettingly – they take a local woman (Virginia Leith) prisoner and leave her to be harassed by an increasingly unhinged Sidney.

Sidney’s rants are drawn from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and these guys are like marooned sailors I suppose, but Sidney’s Prospero is a figment of his own imagination.

Howard Sackler’s script makes the brave point that war is utterly pointless – and that both sides are basically the same – by casting Corby and Coit as the enemy general and his captain, respectively. Unless that was a response to budget limitations.

Kubrick’s visuals – taken shot by shot – are often striking but he hasn’t yet worked out how to string them together in a satisfying sequence and he’s also hamstrung by Sackler’s wordy screenplay. Anyway, it is barely an hour long and at least you can say you’ve seen it.

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Where to watch Fear and Desire