As a teenage and preteen moviegoer, I saw the epics Anthony Mann directed during the 1960s (Cimmaron, El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire, The Heroes of Telemark... and Spartacus from the direction of which Kirk Douglas had Mann fired). When "Gladiator" came along, I was ready to point out that Alec Guiness and Christopher Plummer had played the imperial parts taken by Richard Harris and Joaquin Phoenix better (Russell Crowe's part was different from that played by Stephen Boyd, and Sophia Loren was lost in the snowbound forests).

In the last few years I have seen the adult westerns Mann directed in the 1950s with James Stewart (Winchester '73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, TheFar Country, The Man from Laramie) and Gary Cooper (Man of the West, and Henry Fonda Tin Star. Thanks to TCM, during the last year, I have also seen three of the noirs (Railroaded!, Side Street, Raw Deal) that Mann directed before taking on directing "Winchester '73," which Fritz Lang had been slated to make, plus Mann's first western, Devil's Doorway with Robert Taylor playing a Native American veteran of the Civil War being defrauded.

Mann, the cinema noir director, looks like a junior Fritz Lang. I know that most of Lang's noir were made during the 1950s after Mann's, but Lang's fascinations with clocks, mirrors, and shots through windows were evident in the gangster and spy movies such as "M," Ministry of Fear, Cloak and Dagger, and Hangmen Also Die that predate Mann's noirs. And Lang directed You Only Live Once, the prototype of the Couple on the Run genre that flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s ("Bonnie and Clyde" and "Badlands" being the most notable), back in 1937.

"Desperate," made in 1947, is mostly an instance of the Couple on the Run genre. The couple in "Desperate" (Steve Brodie and Audrey Long) lack the charisma of Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney (or Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway... or Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis), and their needing to be on the run is considerably more difficult to credit than the need for other couples.

Admittedly, if people behaved rationally or loved wisely, the world of cinema noir would not exist. Many a noir protagonist (anti-hero) is tricked into rash acts and trouble by a duplicitous woman (They Drive by Night, Double Indemnity, Railroaded!, etc.). In this regard, "Desperate" is more in the tradition of gangster movies (plus "You Only Live Once") in that associates from the protagonist's youth embroil him in crime, in this instance unwittingly. Steve Randall (Brodie) is an independent trucker who is hired by an old friend to haul some freight. Only when Steve arrives at the warehouse, does he realize that what he has been hired to haul away is stolen goods.

He balks and flashes the truck lights. This draws a policeman who is shot, and Steve's exit leaves the kid brother of the gang's leader, Walt Radak (a sinister, early Raymond Burr), in police hands. Walt doted on the kid and wants Steve to take the rap. This suggestion is made in the movie's most famous sequence. Steve is batted around by thugs as a hanging light swings... and swings, and swings, so that the faces of the antagonists are briefly lit and then return to darkness. Since the technique is more interesting than the plot, I immediately went back to watch it again. The scene involves multiple shots, and the arc decreases, just as a light would gradually reduce the amplitude of swing.

Walt has threatened Steve's wife, and when Steve escapes, his first priority is to get her to safety. This involves a train (on which he panics that he has been recognized), a car that he renovates and then steals, a hijacked police car, inside grotesque carnival figures, and more. The couple reach a stereotypical Scandinavian farm couple in Minnesota (Anne's aunt and uncle). While the thugs are tracking them down, Steve and Ann have a church wedding (shot in high contrast to the nocturnal scenes of crime and flight).

Steve returns to tell the police of his innocence. Lt. Louie Ferrari (Jason Robards, Senior) does not believe him, but sees an opportunity to use Steve (and Ann) as bait to capture the Vadek gang. After Steve gets Ann and their new baby on a bus to California, he is captured by Vadek. This leads to the other two most memorable sequences. Vadek decides to wait until midnight, when his brother will be executed, to kill Steve. This sets up intercutting of the clock ticking down Steve's last ten minutes with increasingly tight close-ups of Steve and Vadek (eventually getting to close-ups of their eyes, prefiguring Sergio Leone).

And there has to be a final shootout, right? Where better (in the German Expressionist/Lang/noir traditions) than on a multi-level stairway. The antagonists move in and out of light, shots ring out, the banister shadows, etc. with switches from high angle shots to low angle shots. Predictable as the outcome is, this is one of the greatest of all staircase shootouts. (I am pretty certain that if I was trying to escape, I would not go up, but flight up is so much more photogenic!)

I don't know how much of the noir look should be credited to Mann, how much to cinematographer George E. Diskant (who went on to shoot They Live by Night and On Dangerous Ground for Nicholas Ray). Along with the menace conveyed by Raymond Burr, the look is what makes "Desperate" of continued interest and value. (OK, I was also curious to see the senior Jason Robards and am embarked on checking out all the movies Mann directed.)



Recommended:
Yes