One Of Kubrick's BEST Films.

The reason that this film got such a poor reception from American movie-goers in 1953 is because, in my opinion, they were incapable of understanding it. Fear And Desire in 1953, would have had much greater commercial success in Continental Europe, especially in France. The Hollywood saturated American audiences of 1953 were conditioned to expect a much different "war movie" than Fear And Desire. European audiences would have immediately recognized it for what is truly is, an Art Film.

This film has high artistic merit

The cinematography and editing are excellent. The use of montage in this film is very effective.

The very small cast of carefully selected and well crafted distinct personality types makes for tight interaction patterns with great symbolic significance.

Overall, I'd call this an Existential film that reflects on many aspects of the human condition. That it is superficially set in a war context is only a theatrical ploy against which is investigated the deeper issues concerning human existence in general.

The occasional "silent monologue" of the various characters, representing their innermost, most intimate thoughts is an effective plumb into the personality and the life situation of a particular character at a given point in the story line.

Although three of the four stranded soldiers are dressed in combat uniforms, all four appear to be "green" and unaccustomed to the realities of combat situations. This combat naivete accentuates their emotional and visceral reactions to the situations in the film where they have to kill enemy soldiers and in their interaction with the peasant girl that they capture.

That the viewer is told by the narrator at the very beginning this "war film" that the circumstances regarding the nations involved in the war and the specifics of the theater of this war in which this film takes place are rather "anonymous" and completely unspecified highlights the fact that this film is not at all about actual war itself. The "war" in this film is symbolic of the "war" that we all must navigate through our individual- lives as we traverse the path of Self and Other.