La Bete Humaine (Jean Renoir: 1938)

Reviewed by Kevin Tran. Viewed on DVD

Because of lackluster films (the kinds of movies that don’t excite audience’s feelings nor their imaginations) premiering in theaters this weekend as award season winds to a close, I feel that it is always best to go back in time and find a film that you missed by a great director, your favorite maybe. For this reason, I rented a Criterion version of La Bete Humaine (The Human Beast) this Sunday instead of spending $10.50 on Jumper (which I am told, isn’t very good). Jean Renoir’s suspenseful drama of a railroad engineer Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin), whose isolated life on his locomotive, his so-called “wife” Lison, soon becomes entangled in a deadly affair. This film is known to be the French director’s earliest masterpiece and it’s easy to see why with its sheer, cinematic beauty.

Renoir begins the film with Lantier and his comedic, coal-shoveling partner Pecqueux (Julien Carette), on board the powerful Lison. With the sound of the thundering engine and loud clatter of the railroad tracks, the camera rocketing in and out of tunnels and long-winded tracking shots, Renoir encapsulates the sheer raw force of these mighty machines that resonates throughout the film. The two must stop at the station house in La Havre, a small village in France, where many other soot-stained workers occupy. Also residing at the station house is Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) the stationmaster who is violently protective over and his lovely, young wife, Severine (Simone Simon), who openly sleeps around. When her eyes are set for the lonely Lantier, he is only too willing to embrace her sweet and elegant charm. As someone is murdered on the train, in which the three are suspected witnesses, the film then primarily revolves around the affair as the audience learns more and of how dangerous and possibly crazy each of the three are.

As La Bete Humaine is often is over-shadowed by other great films by Renoir, such as The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion, this film is rather different in its style and cinematography. La Bete Humaine feels much more claustrophobic and dirtier, because it is so much influenced the railway station house, the oily mechanics, the loud sounds of the train. The film is very organic and natural. The camera looms and lets the characters play out their scene without the disruption of a cut. Gabin perfectly captures the tortured look on Lantier’s face, his disparity and heartache, without ever over-doing it; and Simon, perfectly playing the role of Severine, as the classic Femme Fetal, sucking Lantier in with her round, beautiful eyes forcing him to murder her abusive husband.

Poetic Realism is a term that often describes Jean Renoir works and here it is shown through a kind of smoky Film Noir style (though it actually predates Film Noir by almost a decade!). The combination of low-key lighting and long drawn out takes makes for the ideal technique that captures the attitude and feelings of his complex, torn characters. Renoir has been known to have loved all of his characters equally, which maybe why the film lacks a strong narrative. Though instead, we see the destructive Roubaud, the seductive Severine, and the lonely Lantier (who is the most complex) in a new kind of light that shows their more human attributes. A kind of humanity that is rarely seen in