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SUBJECT:  In 1953 Kubrick raised $13,000 from his relatives to
finance his first feature length film Fear and Desire, which he shot in the San
Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles with a crew of fewer than 10 people, including himself
acting as director, producer, cinematographer, editor, sound man, wardrobe, hairdresser,
prop man, unit chauffeur, administrator, etc. Other crew members included two friends and
his first wife Toba Metz whom he married when he was 18. The script was written by Howard
Sackler, a high school friend. The picture was filmed silently and the sound, including
dialogue, was recorded later. This unexpectedly pushed the cost up another $20,000. The 68
minute film never earned back it's investment (though Kubrick eventually repaid all the
money), but independent distributor Joseph Burstyn was able to book the film on the art
house circuit, including the Guild Theatre in New York.
Since that 1994 screening, Kubrick has successfully prevented announced showings of Fear and Desire in Los Angeles, Ohio, and New York.
However, on a positive note Kubrick added:
CREDITS: --2--Stanley Kubrick Directs by Alexander Walker, expanded edition, 1972, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |
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Fear and Desire is the only of Kubrick's features not available on
home video or for theatrical distribution, and Kubrick likes it that way. When the Film
Forum, a New York City theatre, presented an errant print for a week's showing in 1994,
Kubrick had his studio send letters to all of New York's critics and media outlets,
castigating his own movie. In the note, Warner's publicity VP Don Buckley writes:
"Kubrick has asked me to let you know that if it had been up to him, the film would
not be publicly shown." He also gives Kubrick's review of the movie: "nothing
more than a bumbling amateur film exercise . . . a completely inept oddity, boring and
pretentious." 
"The ideas we wanted to put across were good, but we didn't have the experience to
embody them dramatically. It was little more than a thirty-five millimeter version of what
a class of film students would do in sixteen millimeter." --2
"Particularly in those days, before the advent of film schools, Nagras and
lightweight portable equipment, it was very important to have this experience and to see
with what little facilities and personnel one could actually make a film. Today, I think
that if someone stood around watching even a smallish film unit, he would get the
impression of vast technical and logistical magnitude. He would probably be intimidated by
this and assume that something close to this was necessary in order to achieve more or
less professional results. This experience and the one that followed with Killer's Kiss,
which was on a slightly more cushy basis, freed me from any concern again about the
technical or logistical aspects of filmmaking." ---2