"Desire Me" from 1947 was a troubled film, with everyone hating everyone else, and George Cukor having his name removed from the credits. If only some of that passion had been on the screen, we might have a movie to talk about.As it is, "Desire Me" is the old story of a French woman, Marise (Greer Garson) who doesn't know if her husband, last heard of in a work camp, is dead or alive. A friend of his, Jean (Richard Hart) comes to see her. Her husband Paul (Robert Mitchum) was his friend at the camp, and talked about Marise incessantly. Jean knows all about her, and he was kept alive by Paul's stories. He felt he just had to meet her. He breaks the news to her that Paul is dead. Yeah, and guess what.First of all, you can see this plot coming a mile away. Secondly, though we hear about this great love that Paul and Marise have, we don't see any of it in flashbacks, just their wedding. Third, Jean is such an obvious phony, determined to push his way into her house and life, that it's ridiculous.The name Richard Hart didn't conjure up much for me, and after seeing him in this, I know why. Sadly he died four years later, at the age of 35, which is awful. I would say he was completely misdirected in this. The character of Jean (my opinion only) should have been warm, sincere, helpful, without a hint of pushiness so that he can inculcate himself into Marise's life. Robert Mitchum ultimately doesn't have much to do. He spent most of his time eating sandwiches with onion and Roquefort when he had scenes with Greer Garson, whom he thought was stuck-up. Cukor and Garson fought, and Cukor left the film.For all that, the film is quite atmospheric, with enough dry ice creating fog that you almost couldn't see anyone.Greer Garson is good given the material.If you're a fan of hers, watch this film; if not, skip it.

This film has an odd cast--a bunch of non-French actors playing French people without traces of accents. It's hard to imagine Robert Mitchum as being a man living in Normandy, but he and Greer Garson both star in "Desire Me"--along with Richard Hart.The film begins shortly after WWII. Garson has been living alone since the war began--her husband (Mitchum) in a German concentration camp. She'd since received word that he was dead, but she still is holding out hope that he'll return. A man arrives (Hart) who tells Garson that he was Mitchum's friend and saw him die while trying to escape--and he knows so many, many details about her that his story about being Mitchum's best friend made sense.A bit later in the film, things began to stop making sense. While Garson had fallen in love with Hart, he proved to be very moody and unpredictable--so much so that it makes you wonder how Garson would want to be with this guy. Some of this was done because it fit in with the plot--some of it was due to sloppy writing.Eventually, Hart gets Garson to agree to sell her husband's old business and move to Paris with him. However, in true Hollywood fashion, Mitchum arrives in town--and it's obvious Hart is a liar and cheat. This leads to a showdown between the two men--and Hart seems quite willing to kill his 'old friend'.While this film has some interesting moments and the romance between Garson and Hart is nice to watch (at least at first), the film is far-fetched and a bit confusing. The part that had me shaking my head was Garson's reaction to Mitchum's return--behaving like a woman guilty of something. Were they trying to imply she'd slept with Hart? If not, why the guilt and why would she tell her beloved husband that she would leave him?! In fact, none of this made any sense---and I really wanted it to. And, following the showdown, Garson's reaction seemed even more bizarre---what was motivating her?! Why did she act that way?! Didn't this all seem pretty sloppy?! Apparently others thought the same, as the film was seen as a big disappointment--and I can see why. With this locale and the basic script idea, it should have been a lot better--and more polished and coherent.

This film is an atrocious failure on many levels.It is emblematic of the loss of imagination and the draining of talent of the studio system in the late forties when confronted with the genius of European productions of the same time, especially Italian neo-realism.To begin with, the subject is extremely derivative. It is based on a German play that had already been made into a successful film in 1928 in Germany. This play was inspired, like a whole family of plays and films of the era, by a real event that took place in Italy in the 20's (the Bruneri-Canella case). This case also inspired the 1938 French film "Carrefour" (set in France and remade in Hollywood as "Crossroads"). This French film was later remade in England in 1940 as "Dead Man's Shoes". The same story inspired Pirandello's "As You Desire Me", set in Italy, in the late 20's, which became a Greta Garbo vehicle in the 30's, as well as the novel "The Wife of Martin Guerre" by American writer Janet Lewis (1941), a story set in France in the Middle Ages, which became the French film "The Return of Martin Guerre" (Daniel Vigne, 1982), which was of course remade as a Hollywood film starring Richard Gere, "Sommersby" (Jon Amiel, 1993) and set after the US Civil War. The same Italian story also inspired Edward Wool's 1935 play "Libel!" (filmed in 1959 in England), which has several similarities with the classic film "Random Harvest" (1942).As if the story was not tired enough, the big mistake was to transpose a German play about the aftermath of the First World War in a post-WWII French Brittany setting - filmed on the back lot - that just doesn't gel. The sets appear to be the ones used for the South of France in "Song of Bernadette" and the music by (the ordinarily trustworthy) Herbert Stothart is unconvincing in its attempt to convey any real sense of France or Brittany. Everything in the art direction is stilted and false. Its un-Frenchness is almost frightening. The viewer may get an occasional glimpse of O'Neil, Strindberg, Ibsen, Murnau and Rossellini, but never, never of a French fishing village.The subject and acting try very hard to reconnect the story to some sense of lustful reality while channelling something of the drama and realism of European serious cinema. But they fail. Imagining Robert Mitchum and Greer Garson as a French fisherman and his wife is simply an exercise quite beyond anyone's powers of self-deception.The end result is a cumbersome imitation of European simplicity with misfiring Hollywood production values, an embarrassingly stodgy melodrama that tries very hard to be a thoughtful little art film. It stinks and it sinks and it will forever remain as an example of one of the first signs of decadence of Hollywood's golden era.

(There are Spoilers) Strange to say the least this movie is known more for it's behind the camera's action then the movie itself with Greer Garson almost drowning when she was suddenly gobbled up by an ocean wave during filming. Robert Mitchum so turned off by the studio big-wigs micro managing , in a movie where no one wanted to take any credit for directing it, that it more then helped him developed his lifelong resentment for the suits that run Hollywood with a scene. The director had Greer Garson just saying one word "No", that took no less then 125 takes, which had Mitchum just about call it quits, to being a big time Hollywood movie star, and go back to driving a truck.We see Marise Aubert, Greer Garson, in Dr. Leciair's, Cecil Humphreys, office at the beginning of the movie "Desire Me" very upset about her health and well being even though Dr. Leciair can find nothing wrong with her of the psychical nature. The movie then goes into a long flashback were we see just what brought poor Marise into this depressive frame of mind.Marise husband Paul, Robert Mitchum, had been in a German POW camp since the spring of 1940 and after carrying a torch for Paul all these years, and hoping to see him after the war is over, she get's the sad news that he was killed by the Germans while trying to escape. It's then when this drifter Jean Renavd, Richard Hart, drops into her, and Paul's, large seafront house in Brittany. Jean starts by telling a cock and bull story to the confused and befuddled Marise about how he and Paul were the best of friends, as POW's, in the German prison camp. He also brings out the fact that he was there when Paul got it, right between the eyes, by the Germans sentries as he tried to escape. All this hogwash from Jean has Marise finally give up any hope for Paul ever coming back and with the sneaky Jean using every trick in the book to get Marise to let him stay in her home, rent-free, she quirky fell under his spell.Living it up and having the best of both worlds as Paul's replacement in being Marise's new boyfriend and with the prospect of taking over Paul's very lucrative fishing business Jean, who disliked working with a passion, can now make a very good living for himself by having others work for him not the other, God forbid, way around. There's also the fact that Marise is an excellent cook where Jean, instead of eating in flop houses and soup kitchens, can now have an home cooked meal of shrimp and oysters, his favorite dish, almost every day and night of the week.Thinking that this good deal that he fell into, living like a king in Marise's place, will never end Jean gets the shock of his life when he intercepts a letter, from the nosy mailman Alex( David Hoffman), from non other then Paul himself. In the letter Paul tells Marise that he's alive and well and will be back home very soon to continue his happily married life with her! Jaen not only took Paul's wife and business away from him while he was recovering in a French Military Hospital but it was the double-crossing Jaen himself who set up Paul, who he thought was dead, to get shot by the Germans back in the POW camp!The movie gets really dopey with Jean instead of checking out knowing that the sh*t is going to hit the fan, as soon Paul shows up in town, tries to get the unsuspecting Marise to sell the house and Paul's fish business. Jean then plans to move back to Paris, his and Marise's home town, with him and the money from the sales and continue his lifestyle of the rich and sleazy with Marise being totally kept in the dark to the fact that her long dead husband has come back from the dead.Jean selfish and ridicules scheme falls apart when a happy go lucky Paul comes strolling, and whistling, into town expecting everything to be the same as he left it when he enlisted into the French Army. When Paul finds out what some rotten and back-stabbing rat Jean did by taking away his wife Marise and fishing business his good natured demeanor quickly changes. Instead of being mad at the person who did this to him, Paul didn't yet know that it was that rat Jean. Paul instead takes out his hatred and frustrations on the innocent as the morning snow Marise who by now is so confused and bewildered that she's just about had it with the whole business of missing and dead husbands and con artists boyfriends! you almost expected her to take a walk down by the high cliffs overlooking the Engish Channel and end it all by jumping off.We then have this idiotic duel between Paul, with a pocket knife, and Jean, with a gun that hasn't been shot or cleaned in years, in a thick as pea soup fog. There's also the added attraction of dull and annoying ship foghorns constantly blowing in the background, The outcome of this battle between the two nitwits is never in doubt since we have a very good idea about who won this brainless duel from what we already saw at beginning of the movie. The ending with Marise coming back to the present, from the over an hour long flashback, is about the best thing to happen in "Desire Me" by knowing that the film is just about over and with that so is the pain and suffering of those still left watching it.