Fear and Desire - Production

Production

Prior to shooting Fear and Desire, Kubrick was a Look photographer who had directed two short documentaries in 1951, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre. Both films were acquired for theatrical release by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on his experiences in creating short films, Kubrick felt he was ready to make a narrative feature film. Kubrick quit his full-time job with Look and set forth to create Fear and Desire.

The screenplay for Fear and Desire was written by Howard Sackler, a classmate of Kubrick’s at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, New York; Sackler later won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 drama The Great White Hope. Paul Mazursky, who would later receive recognition as the director of such films as Harry and Tonto and An Unmarried Woman, was cast as the soldier who kills the captive peasant.

Funds for Fear and Desire were raised from Kubrick's family and friends, with most of it coming from Martin Perveler, Kubrick’s uncle and the owner of a profitable pharmacy. The film’s original budget has been estimated at $10,000.

The production team consisted of 15 people: five actors (Paul Mazursky, Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Steve Coit and Virginia Leith), five crew members (including Kubrick’s first wife, Toba Metz) and four Mexican laborers who transported the film equipment around California's San Gabriel Mountains, where the film was shot. Due to budget limitations, Kubrick improvised in the use of his equipment. To create fog, Kubrick used a crop sprayer, but the cast and crew was nearly asphyxiated because the machinery still contained the insecticide used for its agricultural work. For tracking shots, Paul Mazursky recalled how Kubrick came up with a novel substitute: "There was no dolly track, just a baby carriage to move the camera," he told an interviewer.

Kubrick ran into several problems during the post-production process. He shot the film without sound, with plans to add the dialogue track later, along with the music score and sound effects. However, this raised the cost of finishing the film. Kubrick took a second unit assignment to shoot footage for a television film on the life of Abraham Lincoln in order to secure funds to finish the Fear and Desire soundtrack.

Kubrick also ran into difficulty in editing a key scene where one of the soldiers throws a plate of beans to the floor and enters the frame from the wrong side. Kubrick's blocking of the crucial scene was faulty, and his actors accidentally crossed the so-called "stage line," which required the negative to be flipped in the printing process to preserve continuity; this was another expense.