Movies News

Find Out Where and When You Can Watch Stanley Kubrick’s Elusive First Film, ‘Fear and Desire,’ on TV

Stanley Kubrick’s debut feature will be making its worldwide TV premiere courtesy of TCM on December 14 at 8 PM. Fear and Desire was the movie Kubrick made in his ’20s, and was a project he wasn’t proud of. The director reportedly tried to destroy all copies of the film — calling it amateur and juvenile — but a print eventually surfaced. The George Eastman House underwent a laborious restoration process to bring it back to life.

The anti-war drama revolves around a platoon engaged in battle during the Second World War. Stranded, they try to make it to safety, but are sidetracked by an encounter with a mysterious woman. Bleeding Cool shares some info about a scene where the soldiers tie her to a tree with their belts. “One of the soldiers is left alone to guard her … things escalate.”

Kubrick shot the film with a small crew of only 15 people. Since then, the movie has been screened at Telluride in 1993 and presented elsewhere only a few times. Fear and Desire will be shown as part of a 24-hour marathon that honors the preservation department at the George Eastman House and will include screenings of Huckleberry Finn (1920), Roaring Rails (1924), Goldstein (1965), A Page of Madness (1926), Delicious (1931), and Flying Dutchman (1951).