Fear and Desire (1953)
Fear and Desire (1953) is a military action/adventure film directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is noteworthy as Kubrick’s first feature film, and it also one of Kubrick’s least-seen productions.
Fear and Desire opens with a off-screen narrator (actor David Allen) who tells the audience: “There is a war in this forest. Not a war that has been fought, nor one that will be, but any war. And the enemies that struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. For all of them, and all that happens now is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time, but have no other country but the mind.
The story is set during a war between two unidentified countries. An airplane carrying four soldiers from one country has crashed six miles behind enemy lines. The soldiers come upon a river and build a raft, hoping they can use the waterway to reach their battalion. As they are building their raft, they approached by a young peasant girl who does not speak. The soldiers apprehend the girl and bind her to a tree with their belts. One of the soldiers goes insane and, while shouting about the William Shakespeare play The Tempest, fatally shoots the girl. A second soldier also goes insane and takes the raft for a solo voyage. The remaining two soldiers unexpectedly locate the headquarters of the enemy army and successfully infiltrate the base. They locate and kill the top ranking general and one of his aides – only to discover the dead men looked exactly like them.
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