Human Desire [Blu-ray]

Director: Fritz Lang Fritz Lang

Overview

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.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/11/2023
UPC:	0738329263379
Original Release:	1954
Rating:	NR
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Language:	English
Time:	1:31:00
Sales rank:	4,348

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Glenn Ford	Actor
Gloria Grahame	Actor
Broderick Crawford	Actor
Edgar Buchanan	Actor
Kathleen Case	Ellen Simmons
Peggy Maley	Jean
Diane DeLaire	Vera Simmons
Grandon Rhodes	John Owens
Dan Seymour	Bartender
John Pickard	Matt Henley,Matt Henley
Paul Brinegar	Brakeman
Dan Riss	Prosecutor Gruber
Victor Hugo Greene	Davidson
John Zaremba	Russell
Carl Lee	John Thurston
Olan Soule	Lewis
Jean Engstrom	Actor

Technical Credits

Alfred Hayes

Fritz Lang	Director
Lewis J. Rachmil	Producer
Alfred Hayes	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

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.

All Movie Guide - Brian J. Dillard