Desperate

Steve Brodie and Audrey Long

Anthony Mann's Desperate, from 1947, is an effective and evocative noir. This B RKO production stars Steve Brodie as Steve Randall, a veteran struggling to gain an economic foothold post-war as a trucker. Audrey Long plays his wife Anne who unbeknownst to Steve, but not the audience, is an expectant mother. Steve takes a suspiciously lucrative job hauling some "perishables" which are actually the ill gotten goods of a heist masterminded by gangster Walt Radak (Raymond Burr). A police officer intervenes and is shot dead by Radak's brother. He is nabbed at the scene and is sentenced to the electric chair, much to the consternation of his brother. Steve, sought by the police and Radak, goes on the lam with his wife. They take refuge with Anne's Aunt Clara in Minnesota, but nothing can stop the inevitable showdown between Steve and Radak.

The script for Desperate, penned by Harry Essex whose checkered credits include Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Sons of Katie Elder, is standard innocent man on the run fare like I Am A Fugitive From the Chain Gang and many Hitchcock films such as The 39 Steps and North By Northwest. Essex even cribs a newlywed jape from Saboteur. Mann brings his own aura of paranoia to the proceedings. The chiaroscuro mix of shadow and shafts of light displays that there was an Anthony Mann look before he hooked up with cinematographer John Alton later that year for his breakthrough film, T-Men. Mann dollies into close-ups of fists, broken bottles, and, most scary of all, Raymond Burr, to conjure the mindset of his hunted hero. He tracks around the gangster's lair creating a milieu which would become familiar to fans of the director, an oppressive world with no sense of cosmic justice in which coiled characters explode into spasms of violence. 

Raymond Burr and William Challee

Desperate is part of a cycle of postwar films, such as The Stranger and Key Largo, in which the specter of fascism is shown nestling in the bosom of America, usually in the guise of gangsters, as a threat to domestic harmony. This is rendered fairly literally in Desperate. The final face-off between Steve and Radak, a crescendo of ultra close-ups, takes place in the family kitchen amidst sandwiches, milk, and family portraits. The inclusion of a wedding and dance sequence set in a Czech community in Minnesota posits the US as a haven for immigrants far away from Europe's turmoil. When Radak menaces Anne's Aunt Clara, he and his henchman resemble the portrayals of the Gestapo in Hollywood films during the war; something that can't be considered accidental when reviewing the films of the director born with the name Emil Anton Bundsman.

Steve Brodie and Audrey Long are more than fine as the leads. Brodie worked in Hollywood till the end of his life. He was typed as a supporting player and Desperate gave him his only lead role. Ms. Long married Leslie Charteris, author of many novels chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar aka "The Saint", and retired from show business. Burr is always money as a noir heavy. Desperate also boasts a passel of fine supporting performances: especially Douglas Fowley as a weaselly private eye, Cy Kendall as a crooked car dealer, and Ilka Grüning as kindly Aunt Clara. Best of all is Jason Robards (Sr.) as a tough police lieutenant who is willing to dangle the film's hero as bait in order to nab his man.