Human Desire Reviews

A remake of Jean Renoir's LA BETE HUMAINE, based on Zola's novel of the same name, HUMAN DESIRE switches the locale to Oklahoma with the background being the Rock Island Railroad. Crawford is a railroad employee in danger of losing his job because of his explosive temper. He asks his wife, Grahame, to plead his case because she is pals with Crawford's boss, Rhodes. She hates to do it but finally relents, and Crawford gets to keep his job. But Crawford is a very jealous man and thinks that Grahame may have used more than just her wiles on Rhodes. He arranges for the two to be together in a train compartment, then enters and kills Rhodes. Grahame had been spotted at the scene of the crime by Ford, an engineer, but he lies at the postmortem and says he saw no one. Soon, Grahame and Ford are involved in an affair. Relations between Crawford and Grahame disintegrate, and he begins to drink to excess. He loves her very much and uses an incriminating letter to keep them together. Eventually, Crawford is fired and wants to leave town with Grahame, but she has other plans and prevails on Ford to kill Crawford. Ford can't bring himself to murder and only succeeds in retrieving the missive. Grahame leaves town with Crawford aboard a train. In the compartment, she tells him all about her plans for his murder as well as her sexual liaison with Ford. Enraged, Crawford kills her. This sordid little tale is not nearly as sensuous or sexual as the French version, nor is it very suspenseful. The only person we can root for is Ford, and even he sleeps with a married woman. Guffey's moody photography serves to make this movie look better than it actually is.