Human Desire

Human Desire
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Fritz Lang
Produced by Lewis J. Rachmil
Screenplay by Alfred Hayes
Based on the novel La Bête humaine
1890 novel
by Émile Zola
Starring
Music by Daniele Amfitheatrof
Cinematography Burnett Guffey
Edited by Aaron Stell
Production
company
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date
  • August 15, 1954 (1954-08-15) (United States)
Running time
 91 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Human Desire is a 1954 black-and-white film noir directed by Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame. It is loosely based on Émile Zola's novel La Bête humaine. The story had been filmed twice before: La Bête humaine (1938) directed by Jean Renoir and Die Bestie im Menschen starring Ilka Grüning (1920).

Plot

Returning Korean War vet Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford) is a train engineer, who worked alongside Alec Simmons (Edgar Buchanan) for many years before going off to fight for three years in Korea. Alec's daughter Ellen (Kathleen Case) has matured in the interim into a very attractive young woman who is obviously still smitten with Jeff. Jeff is again living as a boarder in her father's house as he resumes his duties as an engineer.

Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford) is a gruff, hard-drinking assistant yard supervisor married to the younger and more vibrant Vicki (Gloria Grahame). When Carl is fired for talking back to his boss, he pleads with Vicki to go into the city to see John Owens (Grandon Rhodes) in whose house she lived as a young girl when her mother worked for Owens as a housekeeper. He is an important customer of the railroad whom Carl hopes will use his influence to get Carl his job back. Unbeknownst to Carl, Vicki had more than just lived in Owens' house, which the viewer can surmise from Vicki's almost firm but subdued refusal to intercede on her husband's behalf. Nonetheless, after his persistent pleading, she very reluctantly agrees to go into the city to ask Owens for a favor. From her manner, we can tell what Vicki will do in order to get Carl his job.

When Vicki doesn't return for almost 5 hours from her meeting with Owens, Carl suspects Vicki may indeed have been unfaithful. After a violent argument during which he slaps the truth from her, Carl forces Vicki to write a short letter to Owens, setting up a meeting with him later that night in his train compartment. He's taking the train to Chicago and Carl and Vicki are returning home. Carl accompanies Vicki to Owen's compartment, barges in when Owens opens the door, and kills him with the knife he'd been whittling with on his way into town earlier in the day. Carl takes Owens's wallet and his pocket watch to make the murder appear to be one done in the course of a robbery, and he also takes the letter that Vicki had written. Carl, with good reason not to trust Vicki, makes it clear that he's keeping the letter as insurance against Vicki's going to the police.

Meanwhile, Jeff, who had driven the train Carl and Vicki had taken into town, is now hitching a free ride back home and happens to be smoking in the vestibule near Owens's compartment, blocking the murderers' way back to Carl's compartment. Carl makes Vicki entice Jeff out of the vestibule so Carl can return unseen to his own compartment.

At the inquest for the murder of Owens, Jeff is called as a witness. The various passengers on the train that night are asked to stand. When he's asked if he had seen any of the people that night, Jeff looks intently at Vicki, then answers no.

Vicki and Jeff soon resume their relationship, and Vicki tells Jeff how she has come to be married to Carl. Jeff suggests Vicki leave Carl presumably to be with him. She finally reveals part of the truth, that she had gone to Owens's compartment and had found him murdered just before she had encountered Jeff smoking in the vestibule and that Carl had kept her letter so Vicki was afraid to go to the police lest Carl use it to implicate her in Owens's murder. She suggests that the only way they'll ever be free is if Jeff kills Carl, making it look like a drunken accident at the rail yard.

Carl has again lost his job and has again gotten drunk at Duggan's Bar. As he stumbles his way home, Jeff, clutching a large monkey wrench he's retrieved from a tool locker in the train yard, follows Carl through the yard, but a passing train blocks our view of Jeff pursuing Carl. We assume Jeff has bludgeoned Carl to death.

However, Jeff appears at Vicki's, saying he couldn't do it. He accuses Vicki of setting him up from the start just so he would kill her husband. She protests that she really does love Jeff, but it's too late. He leaves her, but gives her one thing as he goes––the letter, which he has taken from the drunk Carl's pocket.

Vicki is now free to leave Carl and gets on the next train. But shortly after it leaves the station, Carl enters her compartment, begging her not to leave him while accusing her of running away with Jeff. Vicki denies it and defies Carl, telling him she had tried to get Jeff to kill him. He offers to give her the letter, something he has all along angrily refused to do, but soon, as he rummages in his pocket, he realizes he no longer has it. When Vicki angrily rejects him and orders him out of her compartment, Carl strangles her to death.

Jeff, happily operating the train, has thoughts about taking Ellen to the dance Ellen had previously sold him a ticket to, hoping as she did so that Jeff would ask her as his date.

Cast

Production

This film was largely shot in the vicinity of El Reno, Oklahoma.[1] It used the facilities of what was at the time the Rock Island Railroad (now Union Pacific),[2] though some of the moving background shots show East Coast scenes such as bridges including the Pulaski Skyway and the famous "Trenton Makes — The World Takes" bridge over the Delaware River.

Reception

Critic Dave Kehr wrote of the film, "Gloria Grahame, at her brassiest, pleads with Glenn Ford to do away with her slob of a husband, Broderick Crawford.... A gripping melodrama, marred only by Ford's inability to register an appropriate sense of doom."[3] Variety wrote that Lang "goes overboard in his effort to create mood."[4] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "[T]here isn't a single character in it for whom it builds up the slightest sympathy—and there isn't a great deal else in it for which you're likely to have the least regard."[5]

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved Human Desire in 1997.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Medley, Robert (June 26, 1989). "USAO to Preserve State History at Film Repository". The Oklahoman. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  2. ↑ Carr, Jay (September 1, 2006). "Glenn Ford; actor's demeanor, quiet decency reflected an era". Boston.com. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ Kehr, Dave. Chicago Reader, review, 2008. Last accessed: January 27, 2007.
  4. ↑ "Review: 'Human Desire'". Variety. 1954. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  5. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (August 7, 1954). "Human Desire (1954)". The New York Times. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
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