Main Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Edgar Buchanan, Kathleen Case
Release Year: 1954
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford) needs the intervention of his beautiful wife Vicki (Gloria Grahame) to keep his job, so Vicki meets with Carl's boss Owens (Grandon Rhodes), and Carl's job is secure. Insanely jealous, Carl finds Vicki with Owens on board a train and kills Owens. Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford), an off-duty train engineer protects Vicki and they begin an affair. Still obsessively jealous, Carl becomes an alcoholic and blackmails Vicki into staying with him. Vicki persuades Jeff to kill Carl, but at the last minute Jeff relents, taking on the letter which Carl has used to blackmail Vicki with. Vicki leaves town on the train with Carl -- all the while taunting him with her infidelity. Carl is overcome with a jealous rage that ultimately leads to tragedy. Directed by Fritz Lang), Human Desire an updated remake of Jean Renoir's adaptation of Emile Zola's novel, La Bete Humaine, is a grim sordid story in which desperate people try to relieve their desolate lives with cheap pleasures. Gloria Grahame is perversely alluring as the sexually driven Vicki and Broderick Crawford evokes some empathy as the obsessed Carl. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
Review
Although it's not one of his noir masterworks, this grim tale of infidelity and blackmail provides a reminder that even Fritz Lang's workaday efforts remain vivid and compelling. Updated for the conformist '50s and relocated to the fringes of working-class Middle America by screenwriter Alfred Hayes, Emile Zola's source material retains its sordid tone and tragic scope. As with many thrillers, the emphasis is on an intricate plot driven by the basest of human motivations. The script does get a little heavy-handed in its attempt to contrast the wholesome family life of Glenn Ford's everyman protagonist with the shadowy world into which he finds himself drawn. But this fissure provides enough emotional weight and moral subtext to give the potentially tawdry material a broader scope. Fresh off his Oscar for From Here to Eternity, cinematographer Burnett Guffey evokes the spiritual desolation of the characters with melancholy shots of train yards at night. Small-town Americana and the corruption of the big city remain connected by the power of the locomotive. Compact and evocative, Human Desire proves aptly titled: a simple allegory, but a memorable one. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Peggy Maley - Jean; Diane DeLaire - Vera Simmons; Grandon Rhodes - John Owens; Dan Seymour - Bartender; John M. Pickard - Matt Henley; Dan Riss - Prosecutor Gruber; Victor Hugo Greene - Davidson; John Zaremba - Russell; Carl Lee - John Thurston; Olan Soule - Lewis; Paul Brinegar - Brakeman
Credit
Robert A. Peterson - Art Director, Jean Louis - Costume Designer, Milton Feldman - First Assistant Director, Fritz Lang - Director, William Lyon - Editor, Aaron Stell - Editor, Daniele Amfitheatrof - Composer (Music Score), Morris W. Stoloff - Musical Direction/Supervision, Clay Campbell - Makeup, Burnett Guffey - Cinematographer, Lewis Rachmil - Producer, William Kiernan - Set Designer, John P. Livadary - Sound/Sound Designer, Alfred Hayes - Screenwriter, Emile Zola - Book Author
