#324: RENOIR, Jean: La Bête Humaine (1938)
RENOIR, Jean (France)
Commentary
None.
Introduction
Interview
Gallery
La Bête Humaine [1938]
Spine #324
DVD
DVD
Based on the classic Émile Zola novel, Jean Renoirt's La bête humaine was one of the legendary director's greatest popular successes — and earned star Jean Gabin a permanent place in the hearts of his countrymen. Part poetic realism, part noir, the film is a hard-boiled and suspenseful journey into the tormented psyche of a workingman.
96 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
in French
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2006
Director/Writers
Based on the novel by Émile Zola.
Jean Renoir was 44 when he wrote and directed La Bête Humaine.
Other Renoir films in the Collection:
#818: La Chienne (1931)
#305: Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)
#1040: Toni (1935)
#818: La Chienne (1931)
#305: Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)
#1040: Toni (1935)
The Film
Oh, the trees that were felled to provide the paper used to write about Renoir … huge forests.
And rightly so … truly, one of the great filmmakers of all time. (The 12 films in the Collection just begin to tell the whole story!)
Under the sub-heading of “characteristic” in the above Wiki article, the first sentence reads:
“Poetic realism films are ‘recreated realism,’ stylised and studio-bound …”
Well, one could hardly describe this film as “studio-bound,” as much of it takes place on a real locomotive!
Nevertheless, this fits the description in all other respects — especially the important adjective — poetic. All the great films are “poetry in motion,” and this is a great example of one. Renoir’s camera is never showy — the actors’ performances are never sliced up into slivers, and the story unfolds in the most naturalistic (realistic) way possible.
As Bogdanovich says below, this is truly one of the first examples of film noir.
Trains
One of the first films ever made was Lumière’s 1895 Arrival of a Train. (The legend that the audience was terrified that a real train was about to run them over is apparently an attractive urban myth …)
But filmmakers continued to be obsessed with trains — and it is no accident that the two greatest Japanese directors (Kurosawa and Ozu) feature a train in almost every film they ever made!
Speaking of Kurosawsa, here is Renoir on Jean Gabin (Jacques Lantier):
“He could express the most violent emotion with a mere quiver of his impassive face.”
Kurosawa on Mifune:
“The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression. Mifune needed only three.”
In any case — the story goes — this film supposedly was greenlit because Gabin wanted to drive a train!
**
Adapting the long Zola novel was perhaps Renoir’s greatest achievement in bringing this film to the screen … huge chunks of the story were tossed aside (for example, the character of Flore [Blanchette Brunoy] has a much larger role in the novel) … less a triangle, it is more like a pentagon, with important connections between Lantier, Séverine (Simone Simon), Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux), Pecqueux (Julien Carette) and of course the locomotive itself, which Lantier calls Lison …
The Zola ends with both Lantier and Pecqueux violently exiting the train, with the passengers all blissfully unaware that no one is driving the train.
Cabuche, a peasant who is wrongly accused of the murder of Grandmorin (Jacques Berlioz) is played quite theatrically by Renoir himself.
**
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
57
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Thirty-six page booklet featuring critic Geoffrey O’Brien, film historian Ginette Vincendeau, and production designer Eugène Lourié.
Three excellent essays.
O’Brien:
“The speed of the train establishes the relentlelss rhythm that characgterizes the whole film. Renoir has taken a convoluted and sometimes ponderous Émile Zola novel and reduced it to a series of quick sketches. The cadence is of work and of the all-too-brief moments stolen from work. It is a film of restless transitions, where everybody seems to be forever turning a door handle or walking downstairs or leaning forward to look out the window; one remember Séverine (Simon) being welcomed into the study of her lecherous godfather, while the door is discreetly closed behind her, or a desperate Lantier (Gabin) slipping out of the dance hall unnoticed by the dancers, lost in their enjoyment. Murders and seductions occur offscreen; we see the moments before and after. The long passages of emotional description in the Zola are translated into brief exchanges of glances or the absence of such exchanges: the bruising aftermath of a wife’s accidental confession is rendered in the way Séverine and Roubaud (Ledoux) can’t stand to look each other in the eyes.”
Vincendeau:
“It is in the scenes centered around the railway that Renoir manages to be both faithful to Zola and historically located in the thirties. Echoing Zola’s own methods, Renoir, Gabin, Carette, and Ledoux all studied aspects of railway work, so they could reproduce more accurately practice and gestures. Zola’s elegiac description of the engine is transposed into the film’s famous opening sequence, in which Gabin and Carette bring their train into Le Havre, communicating by looks and signals over the noise of the engine. This documentary impulse informs several other scenes between Gabin and Carette, especially their meals in the workers’ canteen, where the recording of proletarian gestures and language gives banal moments a density far in excess of their narrative function.”
Lourié:
“This somber melodrama became, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful of Renoir’s pictures, a human drama of three poor beings struggling in the cogwheels of their passion. In it, there is a strong ever-present rhythm, like a heartbeat of the railroad, and the visual melancholic poetry of smoke, soot, and steam.”
Commentary
None.
Introduction
To the film by Renoir.
Interview
With director Peter Bogdanovich.
Who rightly points out that that the Zola quote which opens the film (probably put in the by producers) is quite redundant, in that Lantier speaks those very words in the scene with Flore …
Archival footage
Archival footage
Of Renoir directing actress Simon, and interview with Renoir, Zola scholar Henri Mitterand, and others on adapting Zola to the screen.
Simon’s first time on television, Renoir scoots around the giant TV camera, showing how he would set up an ECU on her face for the scene where she rejects Lantier.
Adapting Zola to the screen is a fascinating discussion, with diverging views on what adapting a long novel to film has to become …
Mitterand:
“Zola sought to set up a contrast between humanity’s progress in his day, industrial society, political and moral progress — in other words, ‘civilization’ — and the ‘dark and ancient depths in Man,’ the ‘human beast’ of the title. For him, Lantier and Roubaud hark back in some way to the mists of time and still embody man’s ancient murderous instincts.”
Gallery
Of on-set photographs and theatrical posters
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
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