5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines must confront their fears and desires.
Starring: Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Paul Mazursky, Stephen Coit, Virginia LeithDrama | 100% |
War | 18% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.36:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Thomas Edison made 1,000 failed attempts before successfully creating a commercially viable incandescent lightbulb. The Wright Brothers' first flyer
prototypes were disasters. Einstein had to revise his early special theory of relativity to include gravitational fields. The point is, geniuses rarely get it
right the first time, and their eventual reputations are predicated on practice, sweat equity, and the willingness to learn from previous mistakes and
perfect their craft. This certainly applies to cinema titan Stanley Kubrick, who later referred to his debut narrative feature, 1953's Fear and
Desire, as "a bumbling amateur film exercise." It may be an apocryphal story, but he supposedly even spent years tracking down and destroying
prints in an effort to keep the film from being seen.
By and large, it hasn't been seen. For years, the only ways to view it—aside from rare 35mm screenings—were duped VHS tapes and
bootlegged DVDs. (More recently, the public domain film can be found streaming online.) Fear and Desire has never received a proper, official
home video release. Until now. With a print restored by the Library of Congress, Kino-Lorber has finally
brought the cult gem within easy reach of Kubrick fans and scholars, with a new high definition transfer that's almost certainly the best the film has
looked since its brief theatrical run. It's no 2001: A Space Odyssey—and it bears all the marks of a green director trying a bit too hard—but
Fear and Desire contains many of the seeds of Kubrick's style and is certainly worth watching at least once.
Behind enemy lines...
Previously only available on bootlegged VHS tapes and DVDs—or streaming in some dark corner of the internet—Fear and Desire now gets its
first official home video release, courtesy of Kino-Lorber. Using a rare 35mm print restored by the Library of
Congress, the film has been given a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that seems entirely true to source. And when I say "true to source," I mean the print
doesn't seem to be digitally touched up in any way. This is good, in that there's been no edge enhancement or digital noise reduction applied—the grain
structure looks completely natural—but on the flip side, the print hasn't been cleaned up much either. Unlike, say, Criterion, who will painstakingly
remove specks and scratches and other debris using software, Kino's editorial policy—so to speak—is to present prints "as is." Fortunately, there's not
much age-related wear and tear here, although you will notice semi-regular white flecks, mild jitters here and there, and some brightness fluctuations.
There's also some strong vignetting in the top corners of the frame at times, but this has everything to do with how the film was shot and couldn't
possibly be removed without severe cropping.
Let's not nitpick—Fear and Desire looks wonderful in high definition, and this Blu-ray absolutely marks the best possible way to see
the film aside from traveling to the George Eastman House for an infrequent 35mm exhibition. Clarity is dramatically improved from unofficial
copies—usually twice or thrice duped—and the level of detail is often exceptional, especially in Kubrick's tight closeups of the soldiers' faces. The black and
white gradation is strong as well; there are a few shots where contrast is a little flat, but I'm certain this too goes back to the source. For the most part,
Kubrick's intense chiaroscuro lighting—all deep shadows and funneled blasts of light—is gorgeous to behold. And as you'd hope, there are no compression
or encode issues to mar the experience.
Kino has blessed Fear and Desire with an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo track, which seems to reproduce the film's audio with as fine a degree of clarity as possible. This was an extremely low budget production, and Kubrick shot it without sound, dubbing all the dialogue and effects in after the fact. Invariably, the dubbing is noticeable—everything sounds more stagy than realistic—but the voices are at least clean and unmuffled and mostly easy to understand. (The effects are unavoidably wimpy; listen for those impotent gunshots and the puttering whir of a prop plane flying overhead.) A key aspect of the film's tone is the dramatic orchestral score by Gerald Fried, who would later compose for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the original Star Trek, and the Roots mini-series. The music sounds great; a little thin in the high end—like a lot of films from this period—but with a good sense of presence. The only real shortcoming here is that Kino has neglected to provide subtitles, which would be helpful for deciphering some of Sidney's more unintelligible rants.
Kubrick himself was highly critical of Fear and Desire, his first narrative feature, and it's not hard to see why—it is unmistakably amateurish and floridly poetic in a rather forced way. But there are fleeting glimpses of the director's future genius here—the frantic murder montage, for one—and much of the cinematography is starkly evocative. Despite Kubrick's lifelong wishes to the contrary, the film is a part of cinema history and definitely deserves to be seen. Thanks to Kino-Lorber and the Library of Congress, this is now much easier; the bootlegged DVDs and VHS tapes of yore are now permanently supplanted by this gorgeous new Blu-ray, the film's first official home video release. Kubrick completists will definitely want to add this one to their collections, but all dedicated cinephiles should see it at least once. Recommended!
1957
2007
1980
1977
Ива́ново де́тство / Ivanovo detstvo
1962
2011
1964
1998
2006
1944
Final Cut | 40th Anniversary Edition
1979
1927
1940
1999
1939
1978
1942
Warner Archive Collection
1925
2008
Limited Edition
2008