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Stanley Kubrick’s First Short Film ‘Day of the Fight’

Seeing the early works filmmaking legends is alway instructive but when it’s Stanley Kubrick’s first short film is a must see. Kubrick’s first journey into the moving images was a 12-minute short film documentary called Day of the Fight, which he shot in 1951 when he was 22 years old.

The budget of the film was $4000, which Kubrick self-financed. BTW, he made a cool $100 profit on the film. You can watch the film below.

The film follows the fighter through his day and, in the words of Thomas Allen Nelson. When you watch the film you can see that Kubrick’s cinematography is far better than many twice his age. You can tell that he was away looking at not only the artistic but also the commercial side of filmmaking. If you are a Stanley Kubrick fan then this is required viewing.

Stanley Kubrick’s Flying Padre

I also include below another of Kubrick’s early short films Flying Padre. After the success of Day of the Fight, RKO advanced Kubrick and the Flying Padre was the result.

From Wikipedia, the only place I could find anything on this film:

The subject of Flying Padre is a Catholic priest in rural New Mexico, Father Fred Stadtmueller. Because his 4000-square mile parish is so large, he uses a Piper Cub airplane (named the “Spirit of St. Joseph”) to travel from one isolated settlement to another. The film shows him providing spiritual guidance, saying a funeral Mass, and serving as an impromptu air ambulance by flying a sick child and his mother to hospital.