HUMAN DESIRE (1954) B/W widescreen 91m dir: Fritz Lang

w/Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Edgar Buchanan, Kathleen Case, Peggy Maley, Diane DeLaire, Gordon Rhodes, Dan Seymour, John Pickard, Paul Brinegar, Dan Riss

From the Turner Classic Movies website, www.tcm.com, this article about the film by Richard Harland Smith: "For a brief and wonderfully strange moment in 1953, Glenn Ford and Peter Lorre were up for the same role. Fritz Lang had come to Columbia Pictures from an unsatisfying stint at Warners and was contracted to direct The Big Heat (1953), an adaptation of the crime novel by William P. McGivern, back-to-back with Human Desire (1954), based on the 1890 novel by Emile Zola. The latter had been adapted for cinema twice before. Following a German silent in 1920, La Bete humaine (1938) was filmed in France by Jean Renoir, who cast Jean Gabin in the pivotal role of a railway worker whose psychopathic urges draw him into a murderous menage a trois with his stationmaster (Fernand Ledoux) and the man's perfidious wife (Simone Simon). Zola's psychological bouillabaisse, in which all his characters conceal bestial inclinations, was a natural not only for Lang (whose fact-based 1931 film M had depicted the predations of a child murderer) but for film noir, whose bleak aestheticism was influenced in large part by German Expressionism.

"The project had originated at Columbia with producer Jerry Wald, who admired the Renoir film and hired writer Maxwell Shane (City Across the River [1949]) to do an adaptation. Onboard for the remake, Lang tossed out Shane's work and brought in Alfred Hayes, who had written Clash by Night (1952) for him at Warners. As negotiations with Lorre (away in Germany making a film) stalled, Lang finished The Big Heat. When that trim policier proved an unexpected hit, Columbia slotted stars Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame into The Human Beast (as the property was called at that time), while studio chief Harry Cohn and producer Wald began to chip away at everything that had attracted them to the story in the first place.

"Harry Cohn hated the pessimistic worldview of the Zola novel and the downbeat ending of Renoir's version. After The Big Heat scribe Sidney Boehm had a whack at the material and Alfred Hayes contributed another draft, the film's protagonist had become a war hero who hated violence (or, in Lang's words, 'like Li'l Abner coming back from Korea hundred per cent red-blooded American with very natural sex feelings, if such a thing exists.'). Even with the psycho-sexual leanings of its tortured dramatis personae watered down to two cents plain, The Human Beast was deemed too hot a property by the executives of the Santa Fe Railroad, whom Jerry Wald had approached for use of their yards as a location.

"The preproduction team traveled to Canada, scouring snowy Alberta for likely locations, until they were called back to California after a minor executive at Columbia was found to own stock in a small railway. These negotiations pushed the start of principal photography to December of 1953, forcing Lang and his cast (which added Broderick Crawford to the mix as the third wheel in what was now a standard issue love triangle) and crew (including cinematographer Burnett Guffey, whose previous assignment was lensing From Here to Eternity [1953] in Hawaii) to shoot during an atypically frigid California winter. Unable to use his chosen actor or present Zola's story in his own way, Lang rode out the assignment, bringing his usual blend of professional tyranny to bear. As shooting dragged on for seven weeks into early 1954, tempers grew short. When Lang lashed out at leading lady Gloria Grahame, costar Broderick Crawford lifted Lang off the floor by his lapels, bringing business to a screeching halt until emotions cooled.

"Retitled Human Desire (to which Lang quipped acidly 'Is there any other kind?') for its theatrical run in the summer of 1954, the film did not repeat the success of The Big Heat, either financially or critically. In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther opined the loss of the 'haunting terror' and 'morbid fascination' of Renoir and slammed the 'flat, lethargic fashion' of Lang's direction. Having satisfied his two-picture contract with Columbia (who opted not to renew it), Lang decamped to MGM, where he had directed Fury in 1936 in an atmosphere of hostility and acrimony. Having since jettisoned problematic studio head Louis B. Mayer and with an attitude of reconciliation prompted by the success of The Big Heat, Metro offered Lang the period piece Moonfleet (1955). The Technicolor production was to be Lang's first in CinemaScope and his most lavish, a bona fide 'A' picture. Despite its attention-getting particulars (color, widescreen and Stewart Granger in the lead), the film failed to find favor in America and Lang soldiered on to the next assignment.

"While the ensuing half century hasn't entirely rescued Human Desire from ignominy, the occasional critic has stepped forward with a bold reappraisal even given the superiority of the Jean Renoir version. Writing in The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris suggested: 'What we remember in Renoir are the faces of Gabin, Simon and Ledoux. What we remember in Lang are the geometrical patterns of trains, tracks and fateful camera angles. If Renoir is humanism, Lang is determinism. If Renoir is concerned with plight of his characters, Lang is obsessed with the structure of the trap.'

"Sources:
"The Cinema of Fritz Lang by Paul M. Jensen
"Fritz Lang in America by Peter Bogdanovich
"Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick McGilligan
"The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre by Stephen D. Youngkin"