Learning on ScreenFear and Desire
2013. DVD or Blu-ray. Eureka (Masters of Cinema series). 62 minutes + extras. £13.99
About the reviewer: Nathan Abrams is Director of Graduate Studies and Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Bangor University. His recent publications include: The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (I.B.Tauris, 2010) and Caledonian Jews: A Study of Seven Small Communities in Scotland (McFarland, 2009).
Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film, Fear and Desire (1953), was, for many years, presumed lost. All known copies of it were supposedly withdrawn and destroyed by a director who described it variously as ‘lousy’, ‘self-conscious’, ‘roughly and poorly and ineffectively made’, ‘inept’ and ‘pretentions’. A surviving 35mm copy was found and restored, but for years was only viewable in New York (I was privileged enough to see a rare 35 mm screening at the Lincoln Center in March 2012) or on a very poor bootleg DVD. However, now thanks to the Library of Congress, the film has been fully restored and transferred to DVD and Blu-ray and released by Eureka, together with some of Kubrick’s early documentaries.
Originally entitled, The Shape of Fear, the film was renamed (not by Kubrick though) to maximise its potential commercial appeal. This title, as well as Kubrick’s rather harsh self-criticism, fails to do justice to it. Written and scored by Kubrick’s Taft High School classmates, Howard O. Sackler and Gerald Fried respectively, and shot on a shoestring budget in the San Gabriel mountains of California using a crew of hired labourers, it utilises a mythical and fairy tale structure studded with literary and other references. It concerns four soldiers, who are trapped behind enemy lines in an unnamed country, at an unnamed time, wearing unspecified uniforms. The most famous of the actors was Frank Silvera who appeared in Kubrick’s next feature, the noir-ish Killer’s Kiss (1955). It also showcased a debut performance by Paul Mazursky who would go on to direct Blume in Love (1973), a glimpse of which can be seen in Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
