Too much of everything

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

They say the French version was better. I can't possibly comment since I haven't seen it but it was Renoir and it was Zola so they may be right but this American version, now called "Human Desire" is by Fritz Lang and I think it comes close to being a masterpiece. He got Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame together again a year after "The Big Heat" and if you thought that painted a rotten picture of America, just wait until you see this.Ford's still the good guy, but not that good. He thinks nothing of sleeping with the wife of a co-worker and when she asks him to kill her husband he says, OK I'll do it. Of course, she's a tramp but there's more to it. You see, her husband is a jealous neanderthal who beats her up and who's already killed one man she's gone to bed with. Remember, Zola wrote the original novel so there are layers to this movie you don't often get in film noir. What we see on the surface is just that, the surface and there is more to the scenario than meets the eye.It helps that the wife is Gloria Grahame and she's magnificent; it may be her best performance. Grahame can be vulnerable and hurting and very, very dangerous all at the same time and, as the old saying goes, she could make a dead man come. It also helps that Glenn Ford is her leading man; even when playing the good guy Ford could be less than noble and you can trace this all the way back to "Gilda". When he tells Grahame he'll kill her husband, you believe him and it helps that the husband is Broderick Crawford. One look at Crawford and you know he's bad news.Was it a fluke that Lang and Ford and Grahame came together again to make this just after "The Big Heat" or was it providence? Either way, they hit pay dirt. Renoir's film may indeed be the better movie but you write this one off at your peril.

From Zola, by way of Renoir, Fritz Lang's "Human Desire" becomes a story of love, hatred, murder, lust, and more murder in and around a railroad marshaling yard.Broderick Crawford is the hulking drunk who is morbidly jealous of his younger and horny wife, Gloria Grahame. Crawford has murdered a big shot who has shown interest in Grahame, and he makes her write a letter incriminating herself. The letter is a chain that shackles her to him. But they've reached that point in a marriage at which the husband comes home from work, the wife stands up from the dinner table and leaves the room. They don't sleep together. They don't speak. The hatred is incandescent. Well, at least hers is. He's still jealous and thick headed and he will never let her go.Enter handsome bland young Glenn Ford, returning to his job as brakeman on a locomotive after a stint in the Korean War. Ellen Case is a pleasant and appealing young woman who lives in the same boarding house and she develops a crush on Ford. Ford is not very interested. He's more interested in Grahame who exudes heat.Grahame has no trouble seducing the rather dull Ford. And she soon begins asking him suggestive questions. "You're a soldier. You must have killed men. Is it very difficult to kill someone? How about my husband?" I just made that last question up, but if Ford weren't so stupid he'd get the picture sooner than he does.However, it finally comes to him, after Grahame has lured him into her web. Let's see. Ford and Grahame are in love and want to get married. But then there the burly Broderick in the way. He's blackmailing Grahame into staying with him. So a reluctant Ford begins stalking his friend and co-worker through the dismal railroad yards one night, a heavy iron weapon in his hand. Crawford has quite a load on and should hardly notice it when his occiput is bashed in. At this point, and a bit earlier, it sounds a little like "Double Indemnity." But it's not as polished and taut a production as "Double Indemnity," nor is the movie-star-handsome Glenn Ford a good substitute for Jean Gabin with his creased and exhausted features. Ford in his railroad outfit isn't dirty enough.Gloria Grahame always suggests sex -- of some bizarre kind. She's at her best as a flirty and slightly mysterious babe who is almost comic in her sensuality. She was extremely good, for instance, in her role in "Crossfire," especially in her almost surreal scenes with Paul Kelly. But this is a straight dramatic role. And 1954 is not 1945, so she seems a little used, in a depressing way.The gloom isn't helped by the production design. Nice shots of tracks criss-crossing and whistles warning ball-playing kids to get out of the way. But those 1950s working-class apartments. Boxes within boxes. All the rooms, all the decor, all the kickshaws, reflective of an organized wholesomeness that is fake. I wouldn't live in one of those places. I'd rather live under one of the beds. The overall ethos is one of a witting, impending doom. If one of the characters saw a light at the end of the tunnel, he'd run out and get more tunnel.

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

Film noir is a mood, a state of mind in a film world. It doesn't just have to be guys with guns, nor is it just infidelity and murder. But it usually rests on dark streets and in rooms with the lights off, with sultry women, average Joes and Big Heavys who are the bane of any person's existence, and sometimes it's just based on the narration, the setting, the way a character stares at one another or holds on a kiss. Human Desire, Fritz Lang's update of Emile Zola's book La bete Humaine (and also made into the wonderful film of the same name by Jean Renoir, a kind of pre-noir example in the 30's), is drenched in noir, and it's a wonderful example of what could be done with the right actors - or seemingly the right ones all the way through - and the right setting. It's set among workers on trains, as an engineer, Jeff, played by Glenn Ford, comes back from Korea and is back a work, a nice but quiet type usually, and also works with Broderick Crawford's Carl. Carl is a big louse of a man, jealous as hell of his wife but contradictory in that he asks him to do a 'favor' in order to get his job back from his wife. She goes to see this boss-man, but Crawford ain't havin' it: he goes ahead and kills the guy on a train, and Glenn Ford's character suspects something, having seen Vicki come out of the same car. But he also kinda, sorta, falls for her, if only by a sudden kiss moment, and she tries to egg him on to 'get rid' of Carl, who has become a total drunk and waste after killing a man. Some guys just can't take it, but can Jeff go that far? And for a dame?Sounds like a book title (matter of fact it was at some point), but it's how Lang presents these characters, in shadows and among the grime of the trains and tracks, and those dark rooms, that make things interesting. It's also good that there's a side character here, Ellen, played by Kathleen Case, as a way of giving some pause from the main plot (she's a younger woman who takes a fancy to Jeff as he comes back from the East and has a kimono for her). Lang makes us wonder: is this dame Vicki Jeff's only choice? Hopefully not, but the dilemma makes for some great chemistry for the two actors, and the tension is ratcheted up as Jeff has to ponder taking the next step for Vicki, or to not, as Carl isn't a stranger to him and this isn't fighting in a war. Ford is fine in the role he's in, and Crawford gets to ham it up with his drunken a-hole of a husband who occasionally shows signs of regret (he's not all black-and-white morally, but as in noir has shades of grays). But with Grahame I wasn't totally sure about her performance, at least at first. She's playing something different than her previous Lang role in The Big Heat where she was just a full-on moll. Here she's a housewife, but one with a checkered past we don't know of entirely till near the final reel. She acts a little duplicitous, but I wasn't always believing her acting even if she looked the part of a femme fatale. It's a strange thing since she isn't bad in the role, just inconsistent, and it was mostly due to some good chemistry with Ford (who he himself is a little stiff in a non-bad-ass-villain role but stuff dependable) that I could believe her in the part.Lang also gets some moments for "pure" cinema, that is without much dialog and just the physical locations and scenes, like how Jeff just motions for a cigarette and drives away as the engineer on the train, or how he tracks Carl one night coming back from a bar drunk. And sometimes the body language and way shots are framed tells a lot about the disconnect of these people: in the aftermath of the murder, one night we see Carl and Vicki at home having dinner, very torn apart, and how they're placed in the house, separated by kitchen and living room or on other side, tells a lot about where they're at even when they don't say much. Things like that, or how Jeff and Vicki are lit outside by the tracks at night contemplating their love/lust for one another, is done with such emotion that is just fine.Other times there is some melodrama, and, again, Crawford does ham it up in some scenes to where it comes close to unintentional hilarity (the crowd I saw the movie with laughed at a few key moments that would've probably been dead-silent back in the day, but this may be more for the change in times than anything else). If it's not quite as great as Renoir's film it's that it's not aiming as high artistically, I think. Renoir's film is a tragic romance, while this is more of a B-thriller with some aspirations for high artistry. It's not to say it's a pale imitation of that film, but it's just different. Lang's world is a bit colder, more cynical, more un-trusting of what humanity is capable of except the occasional good and usually evil tasks. No one character in Human Desire gets off the hook (except maybe Ellen), but the varying degrees makes for a strong comment on post-war morality, a defining characteristic between Lang and Renoir's adaptations.In other words, Human Desire is cool and brutal and more than a bit sexy, and if it's not all great there's enough here for buffs to chew on.