Based on a 1945 story, "Bitter Harvest" by Ramona Stewart that the author later expanded into a full-length novel, Desert Town, the Hal Wallis production "Desert Fury" was reportedly a cleaned-up adaptation for American audiences of the late 1940's. Deliciously trashy pulp fiction, the film always seems to be saying one thing, but obscuring or omitting something else. The melodramatic affairs of Chuckawalla, Nevada, involve Fritzi, a tough-talking casino owner played by Mary Astor, who retains a soft spot for her daughter, Paula. The rebellious Paula is as tough as her mother, but she is portrayed by Lizabeth Scott, who is too mature to be the 19-year-old character. The town's cop, bushy haired Tom, is an ex rodeo cowboy, whose injuries sidelined him; played by Burt Lancaster, Tom has an unrequited love for Paula. Enter Eddie Bendix and Johnny Ryan, a cheap racketeer and his sidekick; although a cloud of suspicion surrounds the death of Eddie's wife, Paula is immediately attracted to the handsome and dangerous con man, and she spurns both Tom's advances and her mother's warnings about Eddie.
However, the film's core relationship is between Eddie and Johnny, played by John Hodiak and Wendell Corey. While the story could be termed a romantic triangle, the complex entanglements are more a romantic pentagon. The dialog leaves little doubt about Eddie and Johnny; theirs is a marriage in which Paula is the interloper, and, given Johnny's flashes of jealousy, the nature of Eddie's wife's death is more than suspicious. Adding further fire, Fritzi and Eddie have history, which creates tension between mother and daughter and explains Fritizi's attempt to bribe Tom into marriage with Paula by offering him a well-stocked ranch. Hampered by the period's censorship, Robert Rossen's screenplay is too superficial to delve into the complexities that drive these five characters, and perhaps the Production Code would not have allowed their motivations to be played out in any case. A year later, Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" sidestepped a similar same-sex relationship that also involved murder.
The movie has several assets, among them the luscious cinematography by Edward Cronjager and Charles Lang, which captures the colorful Nevada landscapes in rich Technicolor hues. The closeups, especially of Scott and Hodiak, are breathtaking movie-star glamor shots. Unfortunately, the immaculate grooming of the cast works against their credibility as denizens of a small desert community. The film is marred by Scott's miscasting, and by a lack of explicitness about Eddie and Johnny. Fritzi's story also seems to lack honesty; she is too tough, commanding, and wealthy to be nothing but a casino owner in a small desert town. Her unexplained connection to the sheriff and a judge and her past relationship with Eddie imply more than what was disclosed. Perhaps a remake without Production Code censorship would reveal the steamy plot details that seem to have been excised from this adaptation. However, as it stands, the entertaining "Desert Fury" is well acted, stunningly photographed, and provocative, more for what it does not say, than for what it does.
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