Fear and Desire (1953)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

A plane with four soldiers crashes behind enemy lines. They build a raft and plan to go down a nearby river at night to get back to safety. A local girl discovers them and they take her hostage. One of them is left to guard her but goes crazy with fear and kills her. One of the other men convinces the group to try a daring assassination attempt of a general they spot in a nearby house. Kubrick casts the same actor to play the general and the leader of the group, leading to an interesting existential question when they meet. There are a few memorably composed shots: the shadowy figure of a man in the river and the fog enshrouded final scene stood out to me. However, narration is overused and slightly pretentious, and Kubrick lets the camera linger uncomfortably long on the dead.