Human Desire

If you think about it, Human Desire could be the title of any movie, as all characters act based on their desires. In this 1954 noir directed by Fritz Lang, we see a basic noir plot--a wife asks a lover to kill her husband, but as Shakespeare was said to have written A Winter's Tale to give Othello a happier ending, so does a Human Desire give films like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity a way out for its protagonist. There is a murder, but just one, and no one goes to the gas chamber.

Glenn Ford stars as a railroad engineer back from the Korean War. In the early scenes, Lang and Ford show how great a job that must have been, as Ford serenely pilots the train, sitting next to his friend and co-worker (Edgar Buchanan) exchanging silent messages. He boards with Buchanan and his family, and Buchanan's daughter, Kathleen Case, now all grown up (with a bullet bra) practically throws herself at him.

Meanwhile, the assistant yard master, Broderick Crawford, who has a fiery temper, gets himself sacked. He asks his wife (Gloria Grahame) to ask a big shot at the railroad to get his job back. She is reluctant, and even for a 1954 film you can tell there's a bad history between her and Owens, the man she is to entreat. Crawford, who does get his job back, gets jealous of the man, and thanks him by killing him on a train. Ford sees Grahame leaving the man's compartment, but doesn't tell on her, and they have an affair.

The film was based on a novel by Emile Zola, and while it isn't a classic by any means it does have a gravitas that is compelling. Crawford is, like Othello or Leontes, undone by jealousy, and Grahame is a woman who is a victim of domestic violence (one scene, that must have been shocking for 1954, has her undo her blouse to show Ford bruises on her shoulder in the shape of a hand), but also has elements of the femme fatale. Does she love Ford, or is she just using him? These questions we ask of Lana Turner in Postman and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (not so much Kathleen Turner in Body Heat) and we don't know the answer with Grahame.

Grahame is the best reason to watch this film. After seeing Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool I'm kind of obsessed with Grahame, who led a very interesting personal life, to say the least (she was married to man and later to his son) and was perhaps the quintessential noir actress (she co-starred with Ford in The Big Heat, as a gun moll with a heart of gold). She had a baby-doll voice, but looked very grown up and was great wearing vulnerability on her sleeve.

Human Desire is part of the Columbia Noir series now running at the Criterion Channel.