Rent Human Desire (1954)

Decent - Human Desire review by LC

A solid film noir thriller, though the resolution feels very rushed and not particularly satisfying.

Bit of a let down - Human Desire review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Fritz Lang’s slightly creaky melodrama has Ford as Warren a train driver back from Korea and back into his old job. One of his railway buddies who was also in Korea is Carl (Crawford) who drinks and is married to the much younger Vikki (Graham). He loses his job after a fight with his boss but gets Vikki to approach Owens who is a bigwig in the railways and she know before their marriage. She spends an entire afternoon with Owens and gets Carl his job back but he gets get to reveal quite what she had to do to secure this and flies into a jealous rage. He gets Vikki to write to Owens to meet on a train and stabs him making it look like a robbery and has the note she wrote tying her to him - and becomes ever drunker and jealous and beats her. She sees Warren as the way out of her predicament but tells so many lies even she can’t remember what she said and he begins to suspect he is being played. Based on a Emile Zola novel Graham is very good as the femme fatale manipulating others around her but Ford who is normally so good seems bemused by the whole affair and final third just peters out……bit of a shame - 3/5

Includes big spoilers. - Human Desire review by Steve

Though made in the 50's, this is typical of the film noirs of a decade earlier. There is a femme fatale, portrayed by the incomparable Gloria Grahame. Glenn Ford is the ill-fated male dupe back from the war. Only now it's Korea rather than WWII. He returns to resume his job on the railways.

Gloria plays a traditional enough archetype, a sexually distorted looker motivated by greed. She seduces the engine driver to persuade him to murder her violent, abusive husband (Broderick Crawford). For most of the film she seems a victim who is physically and mentally tormented by this jealous brute. And she was sexually assaulted at sixteen by her guardian.  

Eventually we learn that much of the web the wife spins to entrap the fall guy is lies. She is damaged by exploitative men, but our sympathy finally snaps when we see the moral vacuum she has learned to conceal. She's quite a horrifying figure. Though ultimately unredeemable, we see that as a woman in that period, her options are limited.    

No one played hot sleazy trouble like Gloria. The noir plot is interesting, and Fritz Lang exploits the railway setting for suspense and shadows and symbolism. GG and Ford are incandescent together- as they were a year earlier in another Lang noir. It's not quite as great as The Big Heat, but still a genre classic.