Human Desire is a 1954 American film noir drama starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Broderick Crawford directed by Fritz Lang.

The story had been filmed twice before: La Bête humaine (1938), directed by Jean Renoir, and Die Bestie im Menschen, starring Ilka Grüning (1920).

Alec's daughter Ellen is smitten with Jeff, although he has had an affair with Vicki, who is married to Carl Buckley, a hard-drinking assistant yard supervisor.

After being fired for talking back to his boss, Carl begs Vicki to visit John Owens, an important customer of the railroad for whom her mother used to work.

He then forces Vicki to write a letter to Owens, setting up a meeting with him later that night in his sleeping car drawing room.

Jeff, clutching a large monkey wrench, follows a drunk Carl in a railyard before a passing train blocks the view of the characters.

[2] It used the facilities of what was at the time the Rock Island Railroad (now Union Pacific),[3] though some of the moving background shots show well known East Coast railroad locations such as the Pulaski Skyway, the Lower Trenton Bridge ("Trenton Makes — The World Takes") over the Delaware River and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

A major number of scenes take place around CRI&P Alco FA unit No.

153 painted as the fictitious Central National; however, the interiors were filmed using a Hollywood mock-up of an EMD F-unit according to the Obscure Train Movies website[citation needed].

A contemporary review in Variety wrote that Lang "... goes overboard in his effort to create mood.

"[5] In 2008 critic Dave Kehr wrote of the film, "Gloria Grahame, at her brassiest, pleads with Glenn Ford to do away with her slob of a husband, Broderick Crawford.