Fear and Desire

Fear and Desire (1953) is a war drama and Stanley Kubrick's first feature, now available to watch online on iFILM. Four soldiers end up stranded behind enemy lines after their plane goes down.

The war is deliberately stripped of place and date: no flag, no year, just a forest, a river and dread. The men push toward their own battalion and run into a local peasant girl, an encounter that drags the worst out of each of them. Kubrick made this at 24 on almost no money, funded by his savings and a loan from relatives, with a crew you could count on one hand. Frank Silvera, Virginia Leith and future director Paul Mazursky head the small cast.

Kubrick later grew embarrassed by the film and tried to bury it, calling it a student effort. Yet you can already see his eye forming here: barely an hour long, it carries early seeds of the madness and violence he would chase for decades. Stream Fear and Desire (1953) online on iFILM.