Harry here... oh man... envy. Now... between this, that Edison FRANKENSTEIN story... if only someone would set me up a screening of THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED or found the Spider footage from KING KONG or LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, I could be a very happy boy. Oh, and the military's Roswell footage that ya just know shows all them alien buggers! Here's El Guapo...
Harry,
El Guapo here with some interesting news.
I have recently had the privilege, nay, the honor to go see a screening of the long lost first feature film by the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. I don't know how much interest this will garner or if it will even be posted but you have no idea how excited I was about this. The only feature by Kubrick that I have never seen. That was up there with going to Hawaii.
For years I had heard that it was impossible to see Fear and Desire because Kubrick had somehow made it illegal to watch it. But, as it turns out, that is quite far from the truth. Kubrick simply bought up all of the prints that he could find making it virtually impossible to view it. But, after hoarding the prints he forgot to renew the copyright, so now the film is public domain. Anybody can watch it or show it to the public anywhere or anytime. Unfortunately due to the lack of film prints the version that I saw is a very old videocassette made of the film in very bad shape. The audio was fine but at times the picture was too blurry to tell what was what.
Kubrick suppressed his film because he thought it was too awful to be watched by anybody, it was his freshman effort and so I wouldn't put it past him to make a bad film at that stage in his life. But, I had no idea how bad that film really could be. It was beyond horrible. I imagine that it was a product of the times. The dialogue and narration were incredibly melodramatic and they were acted as such. I kind of enjoyed the histrionics because Kubrick has always used them to such good use like the over the top Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" and Peter Sellers in all his roles in "Dr. Strangelove." But the problem was that there wasn't anything to back it up this time. The story was not strong enough.
The basic plot is that this small group of soldiers has crash landed 6 miles in to enemy lines and they must confront their fear and desire to get out. Along the way they confront an enemy woman that is oblivious at the stakes and a general whom one of the soldiers wants to kill. It is played out like a hokey Apocalypse Now because it is very hard to believe in soldiers that are shot in, what seems like, a television sound stage. The narration was straight out of a b movie film noir and the dialogue was straight out of a gilligans island episode.
I feel like Kubrick did the best that he could with what he had, though. His editing, yes he produced, co-wrote, edited, and directed this film, was quite well done. It was used to maximum effect in the tense scenes, but unfortunately it was hard to be captivated with lines that he gave us. Unfortunately I am writing this a day and a half after seeing it and since I didn't write anything down, my mind is a blank when trying to recall his "very special" dialogue.
Kubrick was simply trying to tell a story with his camera without the use of a true artists voice in the characters. The shots were all nicely done, very cinematic, and it was all done with the pacing and visual flair that I have always loved about his films. I can understand why he suppressed this film, but you should definitely try to see this whenever possible. The screening I saw, the only one shown at this theater, only had 13 people, pretty close to maximum seating as it happens.
I hope that you, Harry, post this because I want people to know about this most wonderful man's film.
El Guapo signing out
