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:

Stanley Kubrick's directorial debut.

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.

One where Kubrick should have asked for a few more takes!

Unlike the earlier Day of the Fight in which one can see inklings of Stanley Kubrick's later achievements, this film is a minor piece of hackwork with little to be said in its favour. Indeed, the most telling feature is that Kubrick, who would later be known as an obsessive perfectionist, here displays indifference. Almost all documentaries are set up to some extent, but here it would have been clear to the slowest of the audience that the episode of the padre flying a mother and sick baby to a hospital was acted out specially for the film. The clumsiness is compounded by the narration, which goes out its way to inform us that the episode was spontaneous and shot as it happened. With a little more inventiveness, Kubrick could have made the sequence at least partially convincing. (This assumes that Kubrick was responsible for the commentary; perhaps he wasn't, and this was an early lesson for him on what producers can do if you don't insist on full control!)