Desperate (1947)

May 17, 1947, release date

Directed by Anthony Mann

Screenplay by Harry Essex

Story by Dorothy Atlas and Anthony Mann

Music by Paul Sawtell

Cinematography by George E. Diskant

Steve Brodie as Steve Randall

Audrey Long as Anne Randall (Steve’s wife)

Raymond Burr as Walt Radak

Douglas Fowley as Pete Lavitch, a private eye

William Challee as Reynolds

Jason Robards Sr. as Detective Lieutenant Louie Ferrari

Freddie Steele as Shorty Abbott

Lee Frederick as Joe Daly

Paul E. Burns as Uncle Jan

Ilka Grüning as Aunt Klara

RKO Radio Pictures

Desperate is a great film noir with a great title. And it’s definitely a postwar film: Wartime and postwar references are common in the film because 1947 audiences would have been familiar with both. Steve Randall and his brother-in-law are both World War II veterans, and his sister-in-law (Anne’s sister) makes a comment about having to tell her husband that she was pregnant by V-mail (according to Wikipedia, a hybrid mail process used during World War II in America as the primary method for corresponding with soldiers stationed abroad).

The opening credits were a bit of a surprise, with the almost cartoonish shadows cast on a sidewalk and a wall. But the opening music, and indeed the rest of the movie, is anything but cartoonish. Steve Brodie is great in the role of Steve Randall. He falls into a trap set up by Walt Radak, someone he knew when they were children. He has no interest in the heist that Radak is planning; in his effort to get away during the heist, Walt’s brother Al is hurt and a police officer is shot. The officer subsequently dies, and Al is the only one of the Radak gang who is in custody to take the rap.

(This blog post about Desperate contains spoilers.)

Walt Radak is ready to avenge his brother, and he orders Steve (after a beating by Radak’s henchmen) to turn himself in as the guilty party in the officer’s murder. The sounds Steve makes during the beating he receives at Walt Radak’s are terrifying, even though (or maybe because) the beating takes place mostly off-screen. Steve Brodie’s acting, in combination with the lighting and the off-screen action, make the character’s pain believable. The beating is even more frightening because the beginning of the movie shows Steve at home, happy with his wife as they celebrate being married for four months; the viewer is now invested in Steve’s and Anne’s story. The makeup is effective, too: Steve really looks bloody and swollen. These threats to Steve and to his wife Anne convince Steve to go on the run.

When Walt Radak finally catches up to Steve after several months, he and his accomplice hide out in Steve’s apartment, surprise him, and hold him hostage. Radak wants to kill Steve at midnight, the same time that his brother Al will be executed. While Walt and his accomplice wait to kill Steve, the tension mounts: with the ticking clock, then the echoing sound it makes; with the close-ups, then the choker close-ups. And then the tension breaks with the knock at the door from a neighbor.

Walt doesn’t want any more interruptions from any more neighbors, so he and his accomplice take Steve outside, but the police are waiting. Detective Lieutenant Ferrari is injured slightly in the ensuing mélée, and Walt retreats into the apartment building. Steve takes Ferrari’s gun and pursues Walt. The shot of the staircase, the dark lighting, the shadows where Steve and Walt hide to avoid being shot: All are great details.

The shots of different neighbors peeking into the hallway to see what’s going on add some comic relief as Steve hunts for Walt. After Walt’s body falls all the flights down between the banisters, all of the neighbors in the apartment building finally come out into the hallway (don’t shoot anyone in an apartment building if you don’t want any witnesses!). I especially liked the police officer who tells them, “The excitement’s over. Let’s clear the hallway down here”—except Walt’s dead body is still on the first-floor landing!

Desperate is a very satisfying movie on many levels. Anne Randall goes on the run with her husband in spite of being pregnant, and she has the baby before the movie is over. There’s a Czech wedding with a minister at Aunt Klara’s and Uncle Jan’s farm. The film is filled with tension, and it has one of the most evil crime bosses (Raymond Burr as Walt Radak) in all of film noir, but justice and even a little bit of humor still prevail.