Viewing Single Post From: Human Desire

Viewing Single Post From: Human Desire
panzer the great & terrible	Jun 10 2009, 12:34 AM
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,352 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Welles liked him. He sounds like people I've known in the rag trade: tough on the outside, but fair-minded if you get past the bluster (and the blatant sexism). Cohn was enlightened about race, at least, compared to other studio heads. He gave work to Odets (and bought Clash By Night) when Odets desperately needed money and nobody else would help him, and released left-leaning films like Born Yesterday and From Here to Eternity in the McCarthy era. I admire that. He also gave Fritz Lang, not an easy person either, this splendid opportunity to film an update of a classic novel that transforms the anti-hero into a returned Korean War vet, and how many of those are in the movies of that insane period? One thing I forgot to mention is Glenn Ford's performance, which is a lot more lively than usual -- there's a boyish wickedness that comes out from time to time that I've never before seen from this actor: I think of him as doggedly earnest and a little dull, as in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which may not be fair as it was surely his lowest moment (he should have decked Minnelli for making him wear that raccoon coat). Grahame is deliciously slutty, and Crawford's performance is so intense that I finally understood why he was a star for a time. I don't expect good acting in a Lang picture, so I was impressed. I suspect Lang took this project seriously, and I rate it among his best American films. It has raised my opinion of him for sure. Now there are only two more existing Lang flicks I haven't seen: Secret Beyond the Door, tedious title and all, Lang himself produced and said he preferred to all his American films except Fury. The other unseen one is The Woman In the Moon, which Dave Shepard told me to avoid back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I think it would be safe to watch it now, and Netflix has it. I'll report eventually, but I don't expect much.
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Human Desire · The Dark Aisle