HUMAN DESIRE
US, 1954, 91 minutes, Black and white.
Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Edgar Buchanan, Dan Seymour.
Directed by Fritz Lang.
Human Desire is an adaptation of the novel, The Human Beast, by Emile Zola. It is updated to the 1950s, the period immediately after the Korean war. (Jean Renoir had made a classic version of the Zola novel, La Bete Humain, with Jean Gabin and Simone Simon.)
Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Broderick Crawford had all appeared in the previous year in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat. It was successfully reviewed and considered a strong melodrama. However, Human Desire received a less cordial response.
Glenn Ford is rather plain as the Korean veteran who returns home, falls in love with his partner’s wife – but knows that they have committed a murder and has that hold over them. Gloria Grahame could always play sultry as well as pouting. Broderick Crawford could always lumber around as a rather more brutish character.
Fritz Lang had been directing films for over thirty years, originally in his native Germany with such classics as Metropolis and M. Goebbels wanted him to be an official director for the Third Reich but Lang went to the United States where he directed a number of striking films ranging from thrillers like The Ministry of Fear as well as You Only Live Once to westerns like The Return of Frank James and Western Union.
1. The significance of the title for the film? Its indication of themes?
2. What was the total impact for the film? For enjoyment, involvement, insight? Was the film designed for popular audiences? As entertainment, or as provocative?
3. Human nature in the film? What are basic human desires? How good, how evil? What was the good in humanity portrayed in this film? What was the evil? The rationality and irrationality behind factions and motivations? Desires as expressed and unexpressed? The webs of desire? Individuals caught in each other's desire? How well was this theme explored? The original story was French. How well was this exploration of interaction portrayed in the American setting?
4. How well did the train and its journey set the atmosphere? The chorus use of the train and its journey? The way that it way visualized? The train as a metaphor of a journey through life? How subtly was this used? How was it brought in realistically to the plot? Life and death on the train?
5. How interesting a central character was Jeff? How was he presented as the hero? As a representative of Everyman? The ordinary citizen with an ordinary background, involvement in the war, his return as a hero and return to ordinary life? The war and its affect on his desires? The impact of violence and killing? Yearning for peace, family, love, work? Jeff and his work with the train? The control he had of the train? When through a passenger his destiny is changed? His encounter with Vicki? His willingness to lie for her? His being caught in the web? The lie leading to involvement and love? Love or infatuation? The hold that Vicki had on him? Its effect on his life? The compulsion to murder? Why did he refuse? Did he break free? The insight into the desires, temptations, torment? The possibility of damnation?
6. Vicki as a person? How well portrayed? Her explanation of her background? A victim of circumstances and people? A people of Owen's human desires? A victim of Buckley? Her support for him? Her reaction against his jealousy? The mysterious aspects of her personality? Was she really bad? How afraid and in need of love? Her gradual using of Jeff? Her reaction in his not murdering Buckley? Her decision to be freed from the web of human desire? Her inevitably being caught? Her death on the train? What insight into this kind of woman?
7. The insight into Buckley? The gruff big kind of man? His jealousy? His ambition to succeed? His humiliation? His infatuation with Vicki? His using her for his job? This reverberating in him? His possibillty of being murdered? His gambling and drinking and brutality? The consequent jealousy and his killing of Vicki? What insight into such a jealous character?
8. Owens and this kind of rich man preying on others?
9. How was this all balanced by the presentation of the ordinary familv? The train driver, the home, the attention of the girl? Did this situate the web of human desires in a real world?
10. Effect of particular dramatic sequences? In the house? Potential murder? Vicki's death, the ordinary scenes of the town, of the rail road?
11. How well portrayed was this interaction of hate and love? How significant a film was this melodrama? How effective is melodrama as a way of exploring basic human emotions?
