Human Desire (1954)

[JohnChard]

You never knew me.

Human Desire is directed by Fritz Lang and adapted for the screen by Alfred Hayes from the story "The Human Beast" written by Émile Zola. It stars Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Broderick Crawford. Music is by Daniele Amfitheatrof and Burnett Guffey is the cinematographer. The story had been filmed twice before, as Die Bestie im Menschen in 1920 and La Bête humaine in 1938.

The plot revolves around a love triangle axis involving Jeff Warren (Ford), Vicki Buckley (Grahame) and Carl Buckley (Crawford). Crawford's Railroad Marshall gets fired and asks his wife, Viki, to sweet talk one of the yards main investors, John Owens (Grandon Rhodes), into pressuring his yard boss into giving him his job back. But there is a history there, and Carl is beset with jealousy when Viki is away for far too long. It's his jealousy that will start the downward spiral of events that will change their lives forever, with Jeff firmly in the middle of the storm.

The Production Code of the time ensured that Fritz Lang's take on the Zola novel would be considerably toned down. Thus some of the sex and violence aspects in the narrative give way to suggestion or aftermath. However, for although it may not be in the top tier of Lang's works, it's still an involving and intriguing picture seeping with film noir attributes. It features a couple of wretched characters living a bleak existence, what hope there is is in short supply and pleasures are futile, stymied by jealousy and murder. Thrust in to the middle of such hopelessness is the bastion of good and pure honesty, Jeff Warren, fresh from serving his country in the Korean War. Lusted after by the sweet daughter of his friend and landlord (Kathleen Case and Edgar Buchanan respectively), Jeff, back in employment at the rail yard, has it all going for him. But as the title suggests, human beings are at times at the mercy of their desires, and it's here where Lang enjoys pitting his three main characters against their respective fates. All set to the backdrop of a cold rail yard and the trains that work out of that steely working class place (Guffey's photography in sync with desolation of location and the characters collision course of fate).

Featuring two of the principal cast from The Big Heat (1953), it's a very well casted picture. Grahame is a revelation as the amoral wife stung by unfulfillment, sleazy yet sexy, Grahame makes Vicki both alluring and sympathetic. Lang had wanted Rita Hayworth for the role, but a child custody case prevented her from leaving the country (much of the film was shot in Canada), so in came Grahame and film noir got another classic femme fatale. Ford could play an everyman in his sleep, so this was an easy role for him to fill, but that's taking nothing away from the quality of his performance, because he's the cooling glue holding the film together. Crawford offers up another in his line of hulking brutes, with this one pitiful as he has anger issues that take a hold, his original crime being only that he wants to desperately please his uncaring wife. Strong support comes from Buchanan, Case and Diane DeLaire.

Adultery, jealousy, murder and passion dwells within Human Desire, a highly accomplished piece of film noir from the gifted Fritz Lang. 7.5/10

[Movie Memories]

I like this film also and you couldn't have described Glenn Ford, in this type of role, any better.

Ford could play an everyman in his sleep

He can ease into roles of this type no matter what the genre...straight drama as in The Blackboard Jungle, a western as in Jubal, etc.

Without giving anything away, the only thing I was a little disappointed with was the ending. But, maybe that was just me; I was expecting one thing and got another.

[JohnChard]

I like this film also and you couldn't have described Glenn Ford, in this type of role, any better. He can ease into roles of this type no matter what the genre...straight drama as in The Blackboard Jungle, a western as in Jubal, etc.

Without giving anything away, the only thing I was a little disappointed with was the ending. But, maybe that was just me; I was expecting one thing and got another.

No, I think it's quite fair to be annoyed with the ending, it's a popular complaint. Ford's character is different in the source, and very different in the French version, this was after all a Production Code appeasing picture.

[MartinTeller]

(review from 7/31/10)

The best of Fritz Lang's American output, a psychologically dense tale of lust, rage, jealousy, domestic abuse, sexual violence... and murder. Two of my favorites, Broderick Crawford and Gloria Grahame, expertly weave a relationship fraught with misery. Grahame is especially wonderful, bringing a rich emotional complexity to a character that could easily be played as a one-note manipulator. Glenn Ford is fine as well, playing a somewhat damaged veteran caught in the middle. The film packs a number of surprises and subverts some noir conventions (and perhaps even the production code). Add on a mostly good score and some stark photography, and you've got a thoughtful, bleak portrait of frustration and desperation. Rating: 9

[Steve-O]

Monday, April 14, 2008

Human Desire (1954)

Posted by JeffMarkam

Though Jean Renoir’s The Human Beast has become the more well known and well respected film, Fritz Lang’s American remake Human Desire is an equally provocative film of fate, passion, and suspense. It lacks the ‘human beast’ of the protagonist of Jean Gabin, now in the form of your average joe of Glenn Ford. Lang instead shifts focus on the twisted relationships between Broderick Crawford and Gloria Grahame.

The story has changed to lower working class New Jersey railroad workers. Glenn Ford plays engineer Jeff Warren, a returning Korean war vet who looks forward to a peaceful life at home. Meanwhile, fellow worker Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford) has been fired due to his violent behavior. He begs his wife Vicki (Gloria Grahame) to talk with a higher up, Owens, whom she once knew as a child to get his job back, but when he finds about her affair with this man, it ends up in murder on a train. It is on this night that both Jeff’s and the Buckley’s lives become bound together as Vicki must distract Jeff in order for her husband to escape the scene of the crime. From that point on, Jeff gets involved in a rough passionate affair with Vicki, whose mind is set on the murder of Carl, who holds incriminating evidence against her on the murder. Lying her way through the seduction, Jeff finally wises up, and unknowingly leaves Vicki to her death at the train.

Though Jeff may be the weakest character of the trio, he takes us back to the disillusioned vets of WWII who cannot adjust to the homefront once again. Though he at first feels optimistic to return to a domestic life and possibly a romance with his best friend’s daughter Ellen (Kathleen Case), the excitement he left behind Vicki brings back into his life through their torrid affair. Ellen, introduced as a buxom brunette, gets plainer and plainer throughout the movie as he gets deeper into the affair with Vicki. The 50’s domestic life just can’t keep up with the excitement.

Gloria Grahame’s performance here is a hit and miss, but remains one of her most memorable roles. Her theatrics are a little too much in certain scenes, especially as she tries to tell Jeff of the murder and the abuse Carl has put her through, but during the scenes with Crawford we can see a deeply sexually frustrated woman who has found herself trapped into a marriage with a man who keeps her as a prized trophy rather than a wife.

Completing the deadly trio is Broderick Crawford, playing a fuse that could snap at any given moment. He brings over the uncontrollable rage of Jean Gabin from the original and gives a menacing performance. He prostitutes his wife to get what he wants, and yet is too stupid to realize she has a big sexual appetite.

Lang fully explores the entire space of the train. The cramped corridors look have become a labyrinth with no way out and compartments have become places of entrapment that lead the characters to their own doomed fate. The loud noise of the train makes two murders go unnoticed, and at one point leaves Jeff alone with his thoughts of the affair, unable to speak to anyone during his daily route.

Burnett Guffey brings out Lang’s deep shadows and expressionistic images on to screen, he would also lense other classic noirs such as The Reckless Moment, My Name is Julia Ross, and In a Lonely Place, and would later win an Oscar for Bonnie and Clyde. Daniele Amfitheatrof provides a menacing score, one of noir’s best, a harder edged version of something of Miklós Rózsa.

It’s hard to garner up respect when Human Desire has to live up to Émile Zola’s source material, Jean Renoir’s original, AND the first Lang-Ford-Grahame pairing of The Big Heat. But this is still a Fritz Lang film, plenty of doom, grittiness, and pure noir abound. Human Desire brings together the gritty realism of The Big Heat and Fury and the German Expressionism of M and Scarlet Street. It is certainly the master’s most underrated and undervalued picture because of what it has to live up to.