Summary
Four soldiers are stuck six miles behind enemy lines after a plane crash. As they make their way back to their camp they must face their own fears and decide which risks are worth taking when they run a cross a village girl who may turn them in.
First
This is Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film. At just over an hour it barely qualifies as such. In terms of well explored plot, characters and themes it still barely qualifies as a feature film.
As a first feature, it is still impressively coherent and interesting, but it really isn’t the sort of thing that people need to see. There are hundreds of small battle focused war films which tackle the same subjects with more flair, interest, and cinematic importance. What gives this film its importance is its director and that’s a shame.
As a cinephile I prefer to see a film, be wowed by it, and then look for that name as the credits roll and watch more of their films simply to be wowed again and mark that name as an important one. The film is what makes the director great.
Here though, it works the other way around, and that’s a shame. The director’s name is so large that the film gets a treatment that in my opinion, it doesn’t deserve. Even he didn’t think it was a good film, saying , "It’s not a film I remember with any pride, except for the fact it was finished.”
Alas for Kubrick, it was his first, and therefore important, even if it’s only so so.
Family
Great people imbue the things they touch with a scent of greatness so that years later we still flock to see George Washington’s signature on the declaration of independence. If they could produce the axe that chopped down the apple tree, people would probably want to see that as well. However, it would only be Washington's actual close family or the most die hard of historians who would be interested in reading his first essays he wrote for school as a 12 year old.
That is what this film is for Kubrick. It has his stamp on it and will therefore be preserved, but it is mostly only interesting to those who were close to him as family, or to students, his adopted children, clinging to every scrap of remembrance of him that they can find.
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