Fear and Desire is a 1952 American independently-produced anti-war film directed, produced, and edited by Stanley Kubrick, and written by Howard Sackler.With a production team of fifteen people, the film, which originally premiered at the Venice Film Festival under the title Shape of Fear, was Kubrick's feature directorial debut. 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 doesn't 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.[5] Kubrick quit his full-time job with Look and set forth to create Fear and Desire.[9]

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.[10] 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.[5]

Funds for Fear and Desire were raised from Kubrick's family and friends, with most of it coming from Martin Perveler, Kubrick's uncle and the owner of a profitable pharmacy.[11] The film's original budget has been estimated at $10,000.[5]

The production team consisted of 15 people: the director, five actors (Paul Mazursky, Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Steve Coit, and Virginia Leith), five crew members (including Kubrick's first wife, Toba Metz) and three Mexican laborers who transported the film equipment around California's San Gabriel Mountains, where the film was shot. Due to budget limitations, Kubrick improvised in the use of his equipment. To create fog, Kubrick used a crop sprayer, but the cast and crew was nearly asphyxiated because the machinery still contained the insecticide used for its agricultural work.[12] For tracking shots, Paul Mazursky recalled how Kubrick came up with a novel substitute: "There was no dolly track, just a baby carriage to move the camera", he told an interviewer.[11]

To reduce production costs, Kubrick had intended to make it a silent picture, but in the end the adding of sounds, effects and music brought the production over budget to around $53,000.

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