chaos-rampant Noir is a fascinating journey, especially if you follow patterns in the narrative.In the early stages before noir proper, the detective was everything, in the sense that he was responsible for the story coming together, everyone else including the viewer merely along for the ride. The logic of the exchange between viewers and a master storyteller allayed fears of a universe without order, the gap could be bridged, made sense of; the person existed who could restore missing parts of the narrative for us. A key thread is following this mode of detective fiction into the 40's, starting with Bogie's Falcon.A world war had shattered logic and all the other boring social insights. The world was no longer made of hard matter, it was fluid self, dreams, desire. It was surreptitious sex that could kill you. Writers-investigators could no longer be trusted, as evidenced in Laura, Indemnity, The Big Sleep. The thing had acquired life of its own spun from neon night.So it's a big transition when we arrive at something like this. The detective is only a footnote reporting back with trivial info and to collect expenses. He won't even make the arrest. The game is entirely left between ordinary desperate beings and capricious reality. The plot is that an ex-GI desired quick trucking money to pay for a baby in the pipeline and new home with his darling, a meagre $50, but his sense of what's right rebels late in the night and crooks will be looking across the country for the two of them.Again the woman is pure. There is a wedding scene back in Minnesota among immigrant family that reflects everything that is stable and good in her blood.Our loss is that Mann was always about what's real and pains, together with some handy psychologic workaround. So we get a simple thriller that benefits from a semi-conscious understanding of noir.A deeper way to deliver the story would be center the main anchor on self and let the noir flow be all about guilt that he feels for leaving his girl alone at nights. The anchor is that someone is scheduled to die at midnight.

st-shot After being unwittingly dragged into a heist that goes gone wrong truck driver Steve Randall ( Steve Brodie) and wife Ann (Audrey Long) take it on the lam not only to escape the police but also Radak (Raymond Burr) who wants to revenge his brother getting the chair.One of a handful of well made B noirs made by director Anthony Mann in the forties Desperate is a bit of a threadbare They Live by Night with Brodie and Long giving decent performances as the on the run duo and Burr and imposing one as the cold sadistic thug. Mann moves the film at a brisk enough pace while he and cinematographer George Dyskant provide some of their standard noir canvases, especially a staircase finale, to amp up suspense.

MartinHafer People only familiar with Raymond Burr from his "Perry Mason" shows might be very surprised to see him in his many films before hitting it big as Mason. That's because instead of the nice-guy defender of the helpless, his earlier roles very, very often including preying upon the helpless and being a very, very menacing thug. Again and again, Burr would kill, beat or rob--and in a manner so cold and brutal that you have to admire the guy! Heck, to fans of film noir, Burr is like a god--up there with great noir actors like Edmund O'Brien, John Ireland and Paul Stewart--reliable and tough. Here in "Desperate", one again Burr plays a sociopathic thug--and I enjoyed every minute he was on the screen.Mr. & Mrs. Steve Randall (Steve Brody and Audry Long) have only been married a short time and are struggling to make ends meet. So, when Steve is offered a lot of money to do a late night trucking job, he jumps for it--only to find it's actually a job working with some thugs. He inadvertently gets mixed up in the middle of a robbery and shooting--and the crooks slug him and force him to drive the getaway vehicle. Randall tries to warn the cops--and the gang decides to make him pay. They beat him demand that HE turn himself in and take credit for the crime--or they'll make sure his wife "ain't so pretty any more"! Instead of going to the police (which any sane person would have done), Randall manages to escape from his captors. He then arranges for his wife to meet him at the station and they set off on a cross-country trek to get her to safety. By this time, the police are looking for him--and still Randall does NOT stop and ask for their help or explain himself. In fact, this is a major shortcoming of the movie--we are to expect the leading man to behave in a way 98% of us would not in the same situation. Then, when he DOES decide to go to the police, he says he needs to drive 200 miles there! Why not pick ANY police station between here and there--why drive all the way back home? Regardless, when he turns himself in, they don't believe him--probably because he'd been running for so long! But they decide to release him--assuming he'd be bait to attract the rest of the gang. Eventually, Burr and the rest of the gang catch up to where the Randalls have been hiding. See the movie to find out what happens next.Despite its plot problems which I pointed out already (as well as a baby that seems to arrive awfully fast!), it IS a good example of film noir. While it lacks some of the great cinematography some of the best noir has (except in the excellent staircase scene), the dialog is snappy, the plot pretty good and the villains truly villainous. A very good and enjoyable example of the genre.

kenjha A trucker unwittingly becomes involved with a mobsters and must go on the lam with his new bride. This one is pretty standard fare, with nothing to distinguish it from other low-budget films of the period. Mann made of a number of crime dramas such as this early in his career, with the best being "Side Street," before moving on to Westerns. His direction is competent, although he goes a bit overboard with the lights and shadows here. The story gets off to an interesting start but the meandering script fails to sustain interest. Brodie and Long do OK as the young couple. As he often did in his films of this period, Burr chews the scenery as the heavy.