The Desperate Hours
With Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy .
US, 1955, 35mm, black & white, 112 min.
Print source: Paramount Pictures
Adapted from a bestseller and a Broadway play, The Desperate Hours is an early example of a genre that has become commonplace, the home-invasion drama, with three criminals on the lam taking a middle-class family hostage in their own home. Although the film occasionally cuts away to the police investigation going on elsewhere, it derives its most pointed suspense from the battle of wills between the leader of the gang and the head of the household (the father, of course). As in The Little Foxes and The Heiress, Wyler had a special talent for creating drama in domestic settings by portraying them as spaces that fill with unspoken tension until conflict erupts to the surface. In The Desperate Hours, the tension is much more evident but no less effective. Wyler makes the most of his central location, frequently shooting through doorways in order to provide examples of his brilliance at deploying deep focus, which he uses here for the first time in widescreen (Paramount’s VistaVision).
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Artists and Models
Ministry of Fear
One-Eyed Jacks
Double Indemnity
The Conversation
The Lost Weekend
The Desperate Hours
Seconds
Island of Lost Souls
Chinatown
Hail the Conquering Hero
Citizen’s Band
Dark City
Days of Heaven
