Fear and Desire (1953)
“Any war. Any soldier. No country but the mind.”
Streamed free from the Internet Archive · no signup, no cost — this film is in the public domain.
Synopsis
An airplane crashes six miles behind enemy lines, stranding four soldiers in a forest belonging to no real nation. Building a raft to follow a river back toward their own battalion, they meet a stray dog, raid an enemy outpost for food, and capture a young peasant girl who does not speak their language. Left to guard her, the youngest soldier unravels into delirium with fatal results, while the others fix on a desperate plan to assassinate an enemy general at a nearby base. As the mission unfolds, the men philosophize about war and discover how little of themselves survives it. Kubrick frames the whole story as a fable taking place outside history, where the only real enemies are fear, doubt, and death.
Cast
About the Director
Stanley Kubrick — Made when Stanley Kubrick was in his early twenties and still a Look magazine photographer, Fear and Desire was his feature directorial debut, which he also produced, shot, and edited. Funded largely by his uncle and shot in California's San Gabriel Mountains with a crew of barely a dozen, it shows the future master improvising relentlessly. Kubrick later disowned the picture as a bumbling amateur film exercise and even tried to destroy the prints, yet its preoccupations with war, dread, and the mind already point toward his later work.
Why It’s Free: The Public-Domain Story
Fear and Desire is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright was not renewed. After its distributor died in 1953 and his company folded, the film's federal copyright was never renewed, so it lapsed and the film entered the public domain, allowing it to be screened and copied freely.
Behind the Scenes
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1952 under the title Shape of Fear, then was cut to about 62 minutes and released in the United States as Fear and Desire in 1953 by art-house distributor Joseph Burstyn. Screenwriter Howard Sackler, Kubrick's old high-school classmate, later won a Pulitzer Prize. After Burstyn's death the film all but vanished until festival revivals in the 1990s.
Did You Know?
- Paul Mazursky, who plays the soldier who goes mad, later became an acclaimed director of films like Harry and Tonto and An Unmarried Woman.
- Kubrick reportedly tried to burn the original negative and destroy surviving prints to keep the film out of circulation.
- To save money Kubrick used a baby carriage as a camera dolly and a crop sprayer for the forest fog.
Reception & Legacy
On release the film drew cautiously encouraging notices; The New York Times found it uneven but entirely worthy of the sincere effort put into it. Modern assessments treat it as a fascinating, flawed apprentice work, valuable chiefly as the first glimpse of Kubrick's themes and craft.
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