Human Desire is a 1919 American silent romantic drama film starring Anita Stewart who produced along with Louis B. Mayer.

[1][2] A copy of Human Desire is preserved in the Library of Congress and the Academy Film Archive.

[3][4] As described in a film magazine,[5] the orphan Bernice (Stewart) is raised almost to womanhood by the good sisters in an Italian convent.

Running away to America, where she has been told babies are plentiful, she is taken in by Robert Bruce, an artist whose wife has refused to divorce him, and poses for his projected masterpiece, a Madonna.

Bernice falls in love with the baby borrowed for this posing and is filled with sorrow when the child is taken away.