Human Desire

This is Fritz Lang, so one would expect lots of dark emotion, double crossing, and sexual tension. Well, you won't be disappointed. This one has it all. The story is hardly original. In fact, Emile Zola was given story credit. It is a love triangle with Broderick Crawford and Gloria Grahame as an unhappy couple, with Glenn Ford at his somnambulistic best, showing all the emotion of a turnip. Watching him try to generate the emotion required to be the catalyst in a love triangle was almost painful. In fact, he almost sinks this movie into cinematic obscurity. Thankfully, it is resurrected by the performances of his costars. I am always amazed at the on screen sexuality of Gloria Grahame. She is hardly your typical Hollywood beauty. Her features are somehow askew, but she absolutely exudes sex. The other redeeming performance is given by Broderick Crawford. He plays her jealous, out of control husband. He has a natural explosive persona, but in this movie I kept waiting for him to fly off the rails.

Speaking of rails. This is a train noir, if there is such a thing. It all takes place around, aboard, and about trains. Glenn Ford is an engineer and Crawford the yard boss. Train buffs will love it. There are numerous scenes of the engineer and passenger compartments, the rail yards, the roundhouse, and plenty of rambling track shots. It is all diesel in the '50's which I think most people would agree was the zenith of train travel in the US.

Despite it's predictability and some of it's shortcomings, I still found this movie extremely enjoyable. My only real complaint came at the end, which seemed to leave the viewer at loose ends and feeling somewhat bewildered. Still, if you like trains and dark drama, take a look. It hasn't been around much and the title is fairly generic, so it isn't easy to find, but it is certainly worth the effort.

Fresh from their exertions in Fritz Lang's superheated The Big Heat, Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame (joined by Broderick Crawford) reunite for the director's recension of Zola's La Bete Humaine. This time, the heat is not so explosive, but this film's dense, acrid smokes smoulders away to the point of choking claustrophobia. Like Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, the film opens with us criss-crossing a maze of railroad tracks, and the locomotives, cars and switching yards are never far away in this tale of abuse, frustration, adultery and homicides (plural) somewhere out in the prairie heartland. Grahame, when bad, is always good, but she's never been badder or better than here, as the young wife of the violently jealous Broderick Crawford. Glenn Ford, just mustered out of Korea, gets his brakeman's job back and chugs right into the middle of this marital discord. Lang tightens the screws slowly and expertly for the full 90 minutes of this midwestern nightmare (the final words of which, unspoken, are: "Trenton makes, the world takes," read backwards on a railway trestle). This is a canonical work of film noir, left -- like too many others -- in unviewed obscurity. It's every bit the equal of The Big Heat or Scarlet Street.

Broderick Crawford and Gloria Grahme make an interesting couple as the two of them unravel in yet another boozy black and white (but mostly drab grey) plot of murder, betrayal, and blackmail, this time on a train as well as in a railroad yard, with Glenn Ford in the middle, coming back to his job as an engineer after fighting in the Korean War. It makes for a cozy and claustrophobic setting. While the lines that they say seem a bit unconvincing, their situations and personalities are what make this a memorable film. Crawford is especially impressive as a hulking railroad office employee with a vicious temper and jealousy for his younger wife. The plot has some inescapable holes in it, but the drama and tension build fairly well, first because of his tortuous marriage with Grahme which seems to go with the film's title, as the marriage is a sham that represents another unattainable desire for him. He carries the part off all the way to end.

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 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

The picture is based on the Emile Zola's novel ¨La bete humaine¨. A mild- mannered and essentially decent ex-soldier (Glenn Ford) working as unhinged trainman becomes romantically involved with a mysterious , alluring but heartless and vicious femme fatal (Gloria Grahame) . He lives temporarily at home with an old friend man (Edgar Buchanan) . She is unhappily married to a tough and brutal hubby as ever ruined (Broderick Crawford). They then are involved in a mutually destructive affair . She managed and is convinced for her unwanted husband has his job back , but he has been fired , then the problems and subsequently murder are cropping up , but she plots other malignant purports .

Columbia Pictures Film production, puts all the force of the screen into a challenging drama of furious passions and though there're pretty dialog and little action is amount entertaining . It's a psychological , dark melodrama about fatalism , duplicity , pessimism and human passions . Stylish , well designed and compelling drama , although is sometimes annoyingly shrill . Love , hatred , killing , vengeance indeed figure strongly in this brightly seedy portraits of low life as Fritz Lang did also in ¨Big Heat¨ (1953) equally with Ford and Grahame . The well-designed atmosphere elaborately recreated in railway , trains , stations is entirely convincing throughout . Wonderful performances by the entire casting . Gloria Grahame (married at the time to Nicholas Ray) as manipulating woman who subtly destroys them , winning yet another awesome acting with a smouldering predatory and absolutely hypnotic interpretation in her account of the domineering that occurs from start to ending . The film contains stunning cinematography by classic cameraman Burnett Guffey . The motion picture is narrated with agility and intelligence by the great director Fritz Lang . This movie along with ¨Scarlet Street¨ are remakes of Jean Renor films . In fact ¨the Bete Humaine¨(1938) by Renoir and with Jean Gabin and Simone Simon is considered a superior version .