Fear Of Desire Blu-Ray Review

Fear and Desire is one of the most notorious films in the entire history of cinema. It’s known for two things 1. Stanley Kubrick’s first feature 2. Stanley Kubrick blocked it’s re-release till the day he died, it had a very limited release in 1953. It was recently unearthed by the US library of congress and restored into high-definition and released over there by KINO and over here by Eureka under their Masters of Cinema range.

Fear and Desire is firstly an extremely short film it has a running time of only slightly over an hour but damn it seems like forever…. Barry Lyndon is a much more exciting film. The plot is basically in an unknown land there is some war going on and there are a group of soldiers in enemy lines and they face their “fears and desires”. They try to build a raft to get the enemies’ base, they meet a peasant girl and one of the soldiers is mentally disturbed.

The film is only a curious side note in film history. Kubrick released a press statement to discourage people going to a screening at the Film forum in NYC calling it “a bumbling amateur film exercise”. The film has absolutely dreadful pseudo poetic dialogue that comes off as the type of shit a 15 year old would write. It does however has the first over the top Kubrick performance by Paul Mazursky which is certainly a predecessor to Jack Nicholson’s wonderfully over the top performance in The Shining. It’s a film that fails on almost every level but it does have some decent shots and a interesting idea but very poorly executed, it’s worth watching once but never again.

The blu-ray or dvd does however have 3 early documentaries by Kubrick which are extremely well made and certainly show Kubrick did have IT that early (which the feature presentation certainly doesn’t). The Seafarers is one of the docs and it has extraordinary use of colour, which is almost Technicolor, the subject matter isn’t particularly interesting but the colour is something to marvel at. Day of The Fight predates bits of Kubrick’s first real feature The Killer’s Kiss. The other Flying Padre is a fascinating a somewhat bizarre short doc about a flying priest. Overall the package is worth seeing but don’t expect some lost masterpiece because it is that’s bad.

Ian Schultz

★★★1/2☆

Fear And Desire:★★☆☆☆
The Seafarers:★★★★☆
Flying Padre: ★★★★☆
Day of the Fight:★★★★☆
Rating:12
DVD/BD Release Date:28th January 2013(UK)
Director:Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp,Paul Mazursky
Buy Fear Of Desire:Blu-ray / DVD