"Like the man said, 'Can happiness buy money?'"
Bad acting, bad storytelling, bad sound/dubbing, bad editing, bad ending ... so many aspects of Kubrick's second film are amateurish to say the least. There are some almost comically bad bits here, one of which was the voiceover over a ballet performance (Kubrick's wife, Ruth Sobotka). However, Kubrick's cinematography made the film worth seeing - the man certainly knew how to frame a shot. The highlights were the images of New York at night, the intimacy of the boxing scene, and the battle amidst mannequins. Mercifully, the film is just 67 minutes long, because aside from occasionally nice visuals, the story was a snooze. It's hard to believe that this was just one year before The Killing (1956) and two before Paths of Glory (1957), both of which were brilliant, but a big part of that undoubtedly was the shoestring budget and technical difficulties he encountered. Watch it to get a glimpse of Kubrick's genius in the larval stage though.
Bad acting, bad storytelling, bad sound/dubbing, bad editing, bad ending ... so many aspects of Kubrick's second film are amateurish to say the least. There are some almost comically bad bits here, one of which was the voiceover over a ballet performance (Kubrick's wife, Ruth Sobotka). However, Kubrick's cinematography made the film worth seeing - the man certainly knew how to frame a shot. The highlights were the images of New York at night, the intimacy of the boxing scene, and the battle amidst mannequins. Mercifully, the film is just 67 minutes long, because aside from occasionally nice visuals, the story was a snooze. It's hard to believe that this was just one year before The Killing (1956) and two before Paths of Glory (1957), both of which were brilliant, but a big part of that undoubtedly was the shoestring budget and technical difficulties he encountered. Watch it to get a glimpse of Kubrick's genius in the larval stage though.