Summary
When railway worker Carl Buckley is fired by his foreman, he compels
his seductive wife Vicki to ask Mr Owens, a senior railway official, to have him
reinstated. When Vicki manages to get him
his job back, Buckley is immediately suspicious that she may have
allowed Owens to seduce her, Consumed with jealousy, Buckley
stabs Owens to death during a train journey and uses a letter from his
wife to the dead man to ensure she does not testify against him. On
the night of the killing, Korean war veteran Jeff Warren sees Vicki
leaving the compartment in which the murder takes place. Jeff
finds himself irresistibly drawn towards Vicki and does not mention
what he has seen at the inquest into the killing. Later, once
they have embarked on a passionate love affair, Vicki reveals the
danger she is in and persuades Jeff that he must kill her husband...
Review
Fritz Lang’s adaptation of Émile Zola’s novel La Bête humaine is a
competent example of late American film noir but lacks the intensity
and inspired touch that we see in many of the director’s earlier
works. Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame had both excelled in Lang’s
previous noir thriller, The Big Heat (1953), but here
the pairing doesn’t work quite so well, although this can be partly
attributed to an inferior screenplay.
Burnett Guffey’s slick cinematography is far more successful at conveying the dark undercurrents and dangerous passions than the scripted dialogue, although this is clearly not enough to make this a great film. Lang and his performers show far too much restraint and should have gone much further in showing the torrid and sordid nature of the deadly desires which ensnare the protagonists. Jean Renoir’s 1938 version, La Bête humaine, is much more faithful to Zola’s novel and is far more successful at capturing the tragic essence of the story, through its gradually mounting tension which culminates in a far bleaker ending.
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Burnett Guffey’s slick cinematography is far more successful at conveying the dark undercurrents and dangerous passions than the scripted dialogue, although this is clearly not enough to make this a great film. Lang and his performers show far too much restraint and should have gone much further in showing the torrid and sordid nature of the deadly desires which ensnare the protagonists. Jean Renoir’s 1938 version, La Bête humaine, is much more faithful to Zola’s novel and is far more successful at capturing the tragic essence of the story, through its gradually mounting tension which culminates in a far bleaker ending.
© filmsdefrance.com 2009
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Related links
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To buy this film
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Credits
- Director: Fritz Lang
- Script: Émile Zola (novel), Alfred Hayes
- Photo: Burnett Guffey
- Music: Daniele Amfitheatrof
- Cast: Glenn Ford (Jeff Warren), Gloria Grahame (Vicki Buckley), Broderick Crawford (Carl Buckley), Edgar Buchanan (Alec Simmons), Kathleen Case (Ellen Simmons), Peggy Maley (Jean), Diane DeLaire (Vera Simmons), Grandon Rhodes (John Owens), Paul Brinegar (Brakeman), Victor Hugo Greene (Davidson), Don C. Harvey (Yard Dispatcher), Carl Lee (John Thurston), John Maxwell (Chief of Police), John Pickard (Matt Henley), Dan Riss (Prosecutor Gruber), Dan Seymour (Duggan – the bartender), Olan Soule (Lewis), Hal Taggart (Gruber’s Assistant at Inquest), John Zaremba (’Russ’ Russell, Train Conductor)
- Country: USA
- Language: English
- Runtime: 91 min; B&W
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Crime / Drama / Romance


