The motionless red - eyed lens system of an evil computer ; gallons of blood spilling out of an Art Deco elevator ; a group of sinister , top hat - wearing teenagers stroll down a drab riverside in obtuse motion ; an older man watching a unseasoned daughter sunbathe while wear upon heart - mold sunglasses ; an Army Major rid a nuclear warhead like a bull at a Texas rodeo : All of these image from the vocation of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick have been seared into the corporate conscious of movie theatre history . But there ’s one Kubrick film that even the most serious flick geeks would be hard - pressed to recollect . Kubrick ’s unveiling feature , Fear and Desire , was almost unidentified for X for one reason : Kubrick hated it , and the legendary perfectionist did n’t want anybody to see it .
The future filmmaking genius was anything but when he was a 24 - yr - old kid who take leave his full - time job as a photographer forLookmagazine in the early forties . Kubrick was rent by the magazine right out of the Bronx ’s Taft High School , when he caught the issue ’s center after crack a picture of anewspaperman grievingover the destruction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 . He was cursorily sent out on naming , and finally took photo portraits of a Bronx - born middleweight packer named Walter Cartier for a January 1949 lineament bed cover called “ Prizefighter . ”
The rough and tumble world of boxing inspired Kubrick to eventually pitch the idea of a short photographic film to RKO Pathé , a production fellowship that commission infotainment shorts for a continuing series calledThe March of Time . The “ Prizefighter ” spread give way Kubrick the certificate to convince RKO to hire him to direct 1951’sDay of the Fight , a 12 - second picture about Cartier ’s pre - fight bit . The photographer had become a moving picture director .
But making a characteristic cinema was n’t sluttish . Kubrick sold one more short documentary film to RKO calledFlying Padre — about a catholic non-Christian priest in New Mexico who flies around his 4000 - square - mile parish to offer his followers spiritual guidance — before venture out on his own .
Inspired by the Korean War , which break out in 1950 , Kubrick decide to make a war movie , and muster in his high school sidekick Howard Sackler to indite the script ( Sackler would later on go on to deliver the goods the Pulitzer Prize for his 1969 shimmer , The Great White Hope , and is perhaps best known by motion-picture show sports fan for writing Quint ’s USSIndianapolisspeech in Steven Spielberg’sJaws ) . To foot up most of the bill , Kubrick necessitate his uncle — a wealthy California drugstore chain owner named Martin Perveler — to finance the film ’s budget . The movie idea that Kubrick and Sackler calledThe Trap , then laterThe Shape of Fear , reportedly cost somewhere between$20,000 and $ 40,000to make .
To hurtle the film , which was about four soldiers who take a cleaning woman hostage after they become trapped in a forest behind foe lines , Kubrick looked in unorthodox lieu all around New York City for unknown actors . He finally establish a college student and worker named Paul Mazursky , who was playact in an Off - Broadway play calledHe Who Gets Slapped , to flirt the plastic film ’s sadistic Private Sidney . ( Mazursky , of grade , would go on to become a film maker in his own right , helming cinema likeBob & Carol & Ted & AliceandAn Unmarried Woman . )
“ He was very vivid , glum hair’s-breadth , round centre , and I was not unquiet so much as impressed by a fellow pretty much my own age with his own apartment and a wife , my gosh,”Mazursky said of Kubrickin a 1994 interview with NPR . “ He say , ‘ Okay , you got the part . We give Monday , unscheduled flight from Newark Airport . We pay $ 100 a week , way and panel . ’ ”
The systema skeletale crew shipped out to hit the moving-picture show in California ’s San Gabriel Mountains , which were chosen over a closer New York locale because of concerns about east coast weather . To those who worked on the film — which was basicallythe plaster cast and three Mexican laborershired to comport the film equipment — the assured greenhorn theater director take on an oversize function in every aspect . In his memoir , Show Me The Magic - My Adventures in Life and Hollywood , Mazursky expounded upon his impressions of the bud perfectionist ’s methods .
“ There was no dolly track , just a baby carriage to move the camera,”Mazursky drop a line . “ Stanley did all the shot . No matter what the trouble , Kubrick always seemed to have an answer . To me there was never a question that Stanley was already master of his cosmos . ”
But when Kubrick returned to New York in the wintertime of 1952 with a complete film , he call for a way to get people to see the movie . He come near a veteran film electrical distributor name Joseph Burstyn , who had only released cinema from strange music director like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini . But the alien - minded distributor agreed to buy the movie and sell it as a kind of American art motion picture . The sensationalized poster tagline of the new filmmaker ’s first picture show cry “ cornered … 4 heroic Men and a Strange Half - Animal Girl ! ”
The press at the time mostly sang the cinema ’s praises . The New York Timeswrotethat , “ IfFear and Desireis uneven and sometimes reveals an experimental rather than a milled exterior , its over - all outcome is wholly worthy of the sincere campaign put into it , ” yet also called Kubrick ’s direction “ far from inspired . ”
The motion picture was not a financial winner , and so a dejected Kubrick was forced to take for - hire business , like lead a drab promotional forgetful calledThe Seafarersfor the Seafarers International Union . He shortly attempted to move on by raising money for his next feature moving picture , Killer ’s Kiss , but the filmmaker ’s disdain for his own introduction characteristic begin to take on a near - mythic condition as his own cinematic height grew throughout the 1960s and 1970s . Legend has it that Kubrick destroy the film ’s original negative and seek to do the same to any remnant prints after the failed film fall out of circulation following Burstyn ’s death .
The notoriously guarded Kubrick trashed his first picture show as often as he could . Hereferred to the filmas “ a serious effort , fecklessly done , ” and in a1964 interviewwithThe New York Review of Books , he called his launching “ a presumptuous unsuccessful person . ” In Joseph Gelmis ’s book , The Film Director as Superstar , KubrickreminiscedaboutFear and Desire , saying , “ It ’s not a film I call up with any pride , except for the fact it was finish . ”
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The motion-picture show ’s copyright finally sink , andFear and Desirefell into the public domain , which allowed it to be legally shown by anyone who managed to chance a mark of it . finally , New York ’s famed Film Forum seek to show a edition of the film in 1994 that was found and restored by The George Eastman House . It was the first timeFear and Desirehad been publicly screen since its handout 41 old age prior . Kubrick himself personally search to put a stop to the showing , tap Warner Bros. to issuea press releasestating thatFear and Desirewas “ written by a fail poet , crew by a few friends , and a all inept oddity , boring and pretentious , ” and that it was a “ bumbling amateur film exercise . ”
In a 1994NPRinterview , Film Forum ’s theatre director of repertory programming , Bruce Goldstein , said Kubrick ’s hatred of the film only tot to the mythos behind it for the screening . “ It really is a must - see , because now it ’s the mental picture Kubrick wants to suppress , ” Goldstein said . “ So that bring in it even sexier as a box business office attractor . So I think he ’s increased our attending four - fold . ”
Kubrick doubtless made better films , but the source of his cinematic hallmark are there inFear and Desire , right down to its radical of best set plans snuff it cockeyed . The Eastman mark was the only available edition of the cinema , except for extract seen in the 2001 Kubrick retrospective documentaryStanley Kubrick : A Life in Pictures . A new restoration was made at theLibrary of Congressin 2012 , and released on home video by Kino that same class . you’re able to also watch the movie in its entirety below .
Now anybody is free to judge whetherFear and Desirereally is an amateur film , or a simple prelude to the masterpiece that would fall out it . But just remember : Kubrick would n’t okay .
