Yet another film for these days of isolation, Fritz Lang's Human Desire (1954). Lang made this film a year after his The Big Heat, and both Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame return as main characters. The story derives from Emile Zola's La Bete humaine (sorry about missing accents), and had been filmed in 1938 by Jean Renoir. This is not top tier Lang, but it is interesting. For me, the trains are most impressive. The trains and the train yards (with Round House no less) mark the energy and thrust and drive and force and inevitability of human desire. Lang dwells on these huge beasts, the trains and especially the engines. These diesel engines are most likely first generation; they are large and shiny. Someone in the film mentions that they have recently replaced the steam engines. Anyway, the trains are a nice backdrop to the heated action with Gloria Grahame delivering a steamy performance with her over-lipsticked lips and slinky movements. Broderick Crawford as her husband is suitably bearish and Ford is strangely dopey as the guy who seems to prefer the fatal women over the young innocent who throws herself at him. No one is particularly likeable in this tale of abuse and desire. 

The Blue Gardenia (1953), directed by Fritz Lang. I am a fan of Lang’s film, and so this film is a must see. It is, however, minor Lang. It has the familiar Lang theme of a haunted and hunted protagonist, this time a beleaguered Nora Larkin (Anne Baxter) who works in a telephone exchange, along with her two pals and roommates, Crystal Carpenter (Ann Southern) and Sally Ellis (Jeff Donnell). Noral finds herself dumped by her boyfriend on her birthday, and on the rebound she accepts an invitation to dinner by the artist, Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr). Beware those oily artists. Before you know it, Noral is fingered for the murder of Mr. Prebble. Newspaper columnist Casey Mayo (Richard Conte) is out for a story and takes it upon himself to investigate the murder. The film has its moments, a couple of darkly lit scenes and ominous compositions. On the whole, however, the film pales alongside Lang’s best, films such as The Big Heat the same year or Scarlet Street (1945), The Woman in the Window (1944), and of course the magnificent early features before Lang left Germany.

 

Cloak and Dagger (1946), directed by Fritz Lang. Perhaps not one of Lang’s best, Cloak and Dagger documents the exploits of a scientist recruited by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) during the late stages of the Second World War. The scientist had been working on the Manhattan Project, but OSS wants him to travel to Europe to find out whether the Nazis are also developing a nuclear capability. The opening scenes have some powerful excoriations of the bomb, and later the film has a couple of shocking deaths, including one silent fight just inside a foyer of a building. The two leads are Gary Cooper as the scientist and Lilli Palmer as a resistance fighter in Italy. Of course, the two of them fall in love despite the death and destruction around them. At one point, their sojourn in a safe house is ended by a cat! The film begins slowly and picks up steam as it rolls along. The ending is particularly effective. Not at the top of the list of Lang’s films, but sufficiently dark and haunted by fatalism to serve Lang fans well.