Desperate – Directed by Anthony Mann. Escape Drama. A framed trucker has to keep getting out of town because gangsters want him dead. 110 minutes Black and White 1947.
* * *
Desperate lacks money and talent behind it and is undermined by a weak performance by the wife. Anthony Mann’s writing leaves the women unfulfilled. The wife has no fight in her and is therefore not worth fighting for. Steve Brodie plays the good boy. He’s a decent enough actor, but his role and its writing and its playing are boring compared to that of Raymond Burr, The Villain of this Old Fashioned Melerdrmer who sinks his fangs into the vengeful pursuer, letting you see what a real actor can do when he sets his mind to it. Desperate is not noir. Noir does not have a choirboy as a protagonist. It has a cynic or someone about to be a cynic. What this is is an escape picture in a gangster milieu. Poor happily married Brodie rents his truck unwittingly to robbers, and all hell breaks loose. Jason Robards Sr. brings his nail file and nail file voice to the role of the cop.
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