Flying Padre: An RKO-Pathe Screenliner (1951)

Director:

Stanley Kubrick

Writers:

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot:

Two days in the life of priest Father Fred Stadtmuller whose New Mexico parish is so large he can only...

Plot Keywords:

Funeral | Priest | Pilot | Target Practice | Ranch

Cast

Bob Hite	...	Narrator (voice)
Fred Stadmueller	...	Himself

Also Known As:

Flying Padre (USA) (short title)

Runtime:

9 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Gallegos, New Mexico, USA

Company:

RKO Pathé Pictures

Trivia:

Production #14208.

Quotes:

Narrator: There's no brass band here, no cheering crowds, no newspaper men clamoring for a headline - just an ambulance driver, an anxious mother, a sick baby and their priest.

Not everything Kubrick is gold...

Had Stanley Kubrick never gone on to become a famous director, three of his early films would never have been packaged together for sale on a DVD. That's because these films are cheap shorts made by an eager and unknown director--hardly works of art. They show none of the director's expert touches--they are just standard short films you might have seen in the early 1950s.

THE FLYING PADRE is not a bad film nor can you really blame Kubrick for it not being all that interesting. It tells the story of a priest who covers a huge region in New Mexico by plane! It's from a long series of "Screenliner" shorts from RKO and were intended as filler when people went to the theater to see a feature. As such, this film is pretty typical of this style of film and nothing more.

If you really want to see one of Kubrick's early seminal films, try KILLER'S KISS or THE KILLING.