FEAR AND DESIRE is a low budget war feature that feels very much like a B-movie; it has a limited cast, a workable script, and a general lack of scope and budget which means there are no big or realistic action sequences. Instead, this is a psychological character drama which looks at the effects of combat on the mind of the average soldier, and how it can drive an ordinary man to madness. This is only of interest for being the debut feature of the acclaimed Stanley Kubrick, whose work here is pedestrian to say the least; I found the whole picture heavy-handed and unremarkable.

Stanley Kubrick's first film was shot for a few thousand dollars in a California forest with a no-name cast when he was 24 years old!! Under the circumstances, I think it is a remarkable film. A little crude at times, and perhaps with a tendency towards purple prose, but a stark, powerful anti-war indictment, with some otherworldly images and characters who are not easy to pigeonhole (the civilized leader of the group is the first to make suggestive remarks about the female captive, the "gentle" young man is the first to go completely bonkers, etc.). You can tell, even by this first feature, that Kubrick is something special; most directors, even the established ones, would never even attempt an abstract film like this in 1953. **1/2 out of 4.

Stanley Kubrick's first feature film was thought lost for many years, but fortunately a copy has been restored and now anyone can watch the first work by maybe the greatest director of all time. Sure, "Fear and Desire" is no masterpiece as Kubrick's late works, not even close, but it still manages to somehow show the brilliance that surrounds the director's works. Set in a metaphoric place as the narrator urges us to know (and yes, that's the main problem of the film: it's too explanatory, something Kubrick will grow extremely away from), representing any war and not one in particular, showing how the event of falling into the enemy lines affects four soldiers, leading one to madness, another to the search for glory and so on. Although very heavily expository, the writing is not as bad as many (including the director himself!) say: the concepts are smart, but surely too stuffed into an hour's film. What I really think should be praised is the powerful idea of using the same actors to perform both sides of the conflict, building up an unsettling sequence close to the end of the movie, which also stands to mean that both sides of a war fight for the same values turned upside down.Obviously, the true highlight of the film is the man behind the camera, with beautiful shots and careful cinematography. The kiddo was already off to a great start.

The excellence of one aspect of this film needs be better noted: The cinematography, the use of light and shadow. The photography. Kubrick handled it all like a pro. Not the direction, he really didn't know what he was doing except to make the thing look as avant-garde (it doesn't) as the script pretends it is (it isn't). There are a few recognizable flashes of ability at direction, as when he places the camera shooting up into the face of the soldier on the raft as it moves along the riverbank, you feel you're in the hands of a master, or at one point inside the general's HQ as he sits in the shadows at the table, which could easily have been edited into the war room of Dr Strangelove. Too bad he was unable to rewrite the script to make it less oblique (it shoots for student-level artsy-craftsy, killing any chance it had at being viewed without wincing). But the images can be said to be beautifully rendered. In his first attempt at it at 24, he had to have been satisfied with the transference of his skill at still photography to film. There are snippets that rival anything shot by Sven Nykvist in his heyday, unfortunately edited by him to flash by too quickly. When we focus on the skill he exhibited juxtaposing light and shadow, it makes this film enjoyable and we the more thankful he lacked the skill to destroy it.