MovieChat Forums > Fear and Desire (1953) Discussion > Kubrick was spot-on in his self-assessme...

Kubrick was spot-on in his self-assessment -

posted 9 years ago by dyahrmarkt
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...which was that this film was a bumbling amateur exercise, like a child's refrigerator drawing, etc. It's a testament to Kubrick's genius that he could recognize pretentious crap when he sees it, and this film is the very embodiment of exactly that....I'm saying this as a longtime Kubrick fan. If you've been holding out on this one and decide to see it out of curiosity, by all means do...but, uh, yeah. It will be the longest, most excruciatingly boring hour you'll ever spend watching a movie

I have a lot of genuine admiration for "Killer's Kiss", his 2nd film; was absolutely startled and surprised by how good it was (if imperfect, with that tacked-on ending). But this thing is laughably bad - Kubrick clearly didn't have any idea about how to manage the 180 degree rule, how to block actors, how to edit, how to show and not tell, etc. It's just all over the place. The "profound" narration is also howlingly awful - Kubrick clearly wanted to show he was interested in Big League Themes - but it's about as subtle as a kick to the face. It's a shame Terrence Malick didn't see this one before making his equally eye-rolling "Thin Red Line" - apologies to those who liked that one.

You really can't fault Kubrick's earnest desire to do the best he could with wanting to Make a Statement. But the acting? Characters? Horrible. Editing? Zig-zag "art"-horrid. It's a student's self-indulgent attempt at a medium he had no clear idea what to do with. You check the invisible style of a Howard Hawks by comparison - Kubrick later on managed to do a beautiful thing that really no one else has been able to do as well - that's create authored works absolutely without the pseudo-profound "respect" this one, for example, demands. You really can't even blame Kubrick - as said, he got what was wrong and really wanted this thing gone forever. I can't say I really agree with those who decided against his wishes to restore it to blu-ray and issue it all for the public to gawk at. It's an embarrassment to the man I consider one of the absolute, top filmmakers of all time.

The only good thing about this movie was the photography - Kubrick was and will always be the master of 4:3 deep-focus camerawork. If one decided to take stills from this film of the best deep-focused scenes and put together a 2-minute slideshow with that not half-bad score you'd have a much better film than what was restored and brought to the public.

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[–] franzkabuki 9 years ago

Well I finally checked it out myself as well and must say I agree with your analysis wholeheartedly; it's really weird seeing the name "Stanley Kubrick" slapped onto a product that seems to come straight from the Ed Wood school of filmmaking. This one really has it all - a spaper thin as well as kind of silly narrative with characters more like loitering behind the enemy lines more than anything else; the acting that's terrible in multiple different ways - one guy overacts with an almost frightening abandon while another is seemingly incapable of registering any emotion at all; ridiculously hokey dialogue's plus, of course, the nonstop jabbering going on in the character's heads that the poor viewer has to endure; editing that will occasionally make the head spin... and to top it all off, the damn thing is both mind numbingly dull as well as pretentious to boot (where oh where is the Kubrick who had an uncanny ability to stage and shoot pretty much each scene in such a way as to render the action always captivating, engaging, interesting...) In short, it's pretty much in the league with the likes of Plan 9 or The Room. Surely, if I were there in 1953, and wished well to young Stan, I'd have suggested he forget about any filmmaking aspirations for he obviously completely lacked the talent required.

And in 4 years time he made Paths Of Glory, largely regarded as one of the all time great war movies. Go figure. And, of course, it's one thing to recognize stuff you're doing wrong, but an altogether other matter to learn to do it right... let alone in a way that's, well, sublime. Something mystical must have happened with Kubrick during that short time frame. Taking huge leaps forward between Fear And Desire and Killer's Kiss, then between Killer's Kiss and The Killing.

PS I DO disagree about The Thin Red Line, though.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] dyahrmarkt 9 years ago

Franz -

Yeah, actually - Ed Wood, when compared to *this* Kubrick, actually had more competence as an overall filmmaker, if none of the instincts and talent.

The leaps Kubrick achieved between this and Paths are astonishing - the latter certainly tackles the existential thing, but I regard the latter as THE model for economic storytelling. This thing just should not exist. It takes that group the entire goddamned movie to get on the raft. They wring their hands about it and act like *anything* but soldiers. I actually yelled out at the screen once or twice - "just get on the raft!"

I think my biggest gripe with this film is that it was restored and released on blu-ray. Without Kubrick's name there would be absolutely no reason to restore it. Those with "praise" for this film do so with total blinders on.

If I taught a film class, it would actually be really interesting to screen this film without the opening credits and gage the class reaction before telling them it was Kubrick. A chance to look at something with objectivity.

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