La Bête Humaine (1938)

La Bête Humaine 
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Jean Renoir and Denise Leblond (both uncredited) from the novel by Emile Zola
1938/France
Paris Film
Repeat viewing

[box] Jacques Lantier: I can’t go on. I can’t go on.[/box]

This adaptation of Emile Zola’s novel may be my least favorite of Jean Renoir’s films.  It is great filmmaking nonetheless.

Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin) is a highly competent train driver, who is a little in love with the steam engine that he has named “Lison”.  He travels the rails with a down-to-earth stoker, Pecquex (Julien Carette).  Poor Jacques suffers mightily from terrifying blackouts ending in homicidal fits. These he attributes to hereditary “alcohol poisoning” with which he has been cursed by generations of his alcoholic ancestors.

Roubaud (the excellent Fernand Ledoux) is the stationmaster at one of the stops on Jacques’ route.  He dotes on his young beautiful wife Séverine (Simone Simon) but is pathologically jealous and abusive toward her.  He gets the idea (probably well-founded) that Séverine has had an affair with railroad boss Grandmorin and decides to make his wife an accomplice in his murder to “bind her to him”.

The two execute the plan on a train and Jacques witnesses them returning to their compartment.  Séverine uses her feminine charms to secure Jacques’ silence and their relationship rapidly develops into something more, ending in tragedy for all concerned. With Renoir as a fall guy.

While I find that La Bête Humaine lacks the humanism I love in Renoir’s films, it grew on me quite a bit on this viewing.  Previously I thought that the entire plot hinged on the “alcohol poisoning” construct which kind of lets everyone off the hook.  This time I saw the film as more of a Double Indemnity-type story, something I doubt Zola intended but could have been on Renoir’s mind.  Certainly Séverine is a classic femme fatale.  Simone Simon, already looking like a kitten well before Cat People, portrays her to perfection.

Gabin brought Zola’s novel to Renoir because he wanted to drive a train, and the railroad scenes are the true glory of the picture.   They are dynamic and beautifully shot.  Needless to say, for me Gabin can do no wrong as an actor.

La Bête Humaine was reportedly the most financially successful of Renoir’s 1930’s films. Fritz Lang modernized and remade the story in 1954 as Human Desire with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsv1hECXClo

Trailer