@Trinity River Bottoms Boomer posted:Human Desire (Glenn Ford is the engineer on the passenger rain) is loosely based on Le Bete Humaine, and was filmed 16 years (1954) after it's French counterpart. Looks like there are several train shots taken from PR railroad promotional movies, however, the Alco FA ABBA set that Ford runs appears to have been given a special paint job especially for the movie. In the original French release, the steam locomotive is cut off the train after it reaches its final destination, and runs to the roundhouse. In Human Desire, the lead FA is cut off the ABBA set and heads for the roundhouse by itself with Ford at the throttle??? Hooray for Hollywood......LOL
Yes! Human Desire doesn't just use a train as a set for characters who are traveling. It is about railroaders.
Broderick Crawford is perfectly cast as an iron-pants railroad official of the 1950's, in a brown suit and a fedora. Glenn Ford is cast as a fairly young Locomotive Engineer, who holds a regular assignment on a passenger train. (In reality, passenger service was highly sought after by those at the top of the seniority list, and Engineers Ford's age could not hold it in most places.) Since it is about railroaders, there has to be a woman of easy virtue, and who could be better to portray her than Gloria Grahame?
The studio constructed a set that was supposed to look like the cab interior of an EMD F-unit, and actually does have some of the equipment from a real locomotive.
