User reviews

I was very surprised when I watched this film; right in the beginning I spotted a great deal of similarities with Fritz Lang´s 1954 flick "Human Desire", with Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford, which I had previously seen. Both films are based on Zola´s story, and, obviously, the merit is Renoir´s, since his version is much better. The psychological and deep meaning beneath the coolness of the main character (Jacques Lantier, in a Gabin memorable performance) is handled superbly; so is his troubled relation with Simone´s character. Despite some boring shots, the photography and screenplay are gems, and "Bete Humaine" ends up being a great addition to Renoir´s filmography. I love him; "La Grande Ilusion" and "La Regle du Jeu" are two of my favorite films; a masterful storyteller and a curious observer of the human soul. A humanist.

Jean Renoir's "La Bete Humaine" (1938) stars Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in an adaptation of Emile Zola's novel. Renoir's novel is part of a series following a family. Lantier (Gabin) suffers from an inherited illness, possibly a chemical dysfunction. He's given to violent outbursts. He falls for the beautiful and childlike Sevarin (Simon) who, with her husband, kills her lover. Lantier witnesses this. Sevarin wants him to help kill her husband.

This is a beautifully photographed, bleak story with the symbolism of the railroad (Lanier is a railway engineer) running through it. Gabin is terrific as the tragic Lanier, and Simone Simon is effective as the woman.

Fritz Lang's later film "Human Desire" is also based on the Zola novel, but the Renoir version has more layers, particularly in the characterizations.

Highly recommended.

Jean Renoir's "La Bête Humaine" is an excellent screen adaptation of Émile Zola's novel, which also contains some excellent photography and a fine performance by lead actor Jean Gabin. While usually overshadowed by Renoir's other more (justifiably) celebrated masterpieces, in itself it is a very good picture, with Zola's ideas and characters providing ideal material for the great director.

Most likely, the reason why "La Bête Humaine" is less appreciated than Renoir's other works is because it is so closely tied to the novel - which itself is actually part of a series of novels. Someone not familiar with Zola would find it harder to understand some of the action, especially the behavior of the main character, railway engineer Jacques Lantier (Gabin). There is a brief message at the opening of the film explaining the basic theme, but it would hardly be possible to bring an audience completely up-to-date with just a short note.

The novel on which the film is based is part of a series of 20 novels that Zola wrote, which cover the history of a single family through several generations and through several decades of 19th-century French history. Each of these stories is capable of standing on its own, but they are more satisfying if you know at least something of the broader context. "La Bête Humaine" is one of the last few volumes in the series, and accordingly, it largely assumes a familiarity with the basic themes. Zola had two main concerns in these novels: (i) to show how certain family traits (positive and negative) re-appear in successive generations, and (ii) to show how the lives of a particular family reflect events and trends in French society as a whole. Zola was a naturalistic writer - he had a strong sense of identification with and sympathy for his characters, but he also portrayed his characters and his country in an uncompromising light, just as they were.

There are at least a couple of ways that this context helps better to appreciate the film version of "La Bête Humaine". First, Jacques Lantier comes from a branch of the family that was particularly plagued with mental instability. He has many positive qualities, but also is tormented by barely-suppressed violent urges. Gabin does an excellent job (as he always does) of portraying his character, but some of it is lost if the viewer is unaware of who he is supposed to be. Second, the railway setting, interesting in its own right, is meant to be suggestive of other forces, both within Lantier's mind and also outside of his life. (The action in this story is supposed to have taken place in about 1870, a tumultuous time in French history.)

All of this comes together in the outstanding opening sequence, which shows Lantier's train rushing across the countryside. The beautiful photography and skillful editing help us to feel as if we were in the train with him, and all of this is supposed to suggest not just the setting of the story to come, but also the powerful forces - both inside Lantier and outside of him - which he cannot control.

All of the subsequent plot developments - interesting and sometimes surprising in themselves - build on this foundation. This is nicely and carefully done, even if some of it is unfortunately lost if the viewer does not know a little of the wider context.

In all his splendid career, Jean Gabin can seldom have acted better than in 'La bete humaine' (= French for 'the human beast'). I do not exaggerate when I label his performance as breathtaking.

Apart from this, 'La bete humaine' is an excellently made film. Competent acting, to start with -- for instance by female lead Simone Simon, a forgotten name. This film's setting in a French railroad-environment adds the right amount of drama, and provides a solid foundation for its plot. According to the technical standards of 1938, its shooting is first-class.

'La bete humaine' is a novel from the Rougon-Maquart-series by the great French author Emile Zola. Back in the second half of the 19th century, Zola wrote 'naturalism': an ultra-realistic style with a bottom-line of pessimism. Coincidence or not, this style fits well with the year 1938, when Adolf Hitler's dark shade was already looming over Europe.

"La Bête Humaine" is a crime drama partially based on Émile Zola's 1890 novel of the same name.

The story follows the locomotive engineer Lantier, who is obsessively attached to his engine, "La Lison", believing that the rhythm of the machine and his routine duties distract him from recurring, intense headaches. However, Lantier suffers from violent fits of rage, especially when alone with women - episodes that grow stronger under the influence of alcohol. During a brief stop for repairs in Le Havre, Lantier visits his aunt in a nearby village. There, he meets Flore, an attractive young woman from his childhood. Their reunion triggers a brutal outburst, revealing that the beast within Lantier is never far. Soon afterward, he witnesses a shocking crime and crosses paths with Roubaud, a deputy station master, and his seductive wife Séverine, who asks Lantier for a dangerous favor...

The story revolves around a single character caught in the collision between human will and innate nature. When themes of guilt and the rationalization of self-destructive behavior are added to that central conflict, what emerges is a deeply dark and brooding noir, filtered through Jean Renoir's distinctive cinematic vision.

The bleak atmosphere mirrors the mental states of the characters. Renoir often lingers on their faces, stripped of any hint of serenity. The train sequences are long, immersive, and among the film's most powerful. In the second half, the tempo picks up - likely to heighten the feeling of dread and discomfort - but this shift comes at the cost of character development: the protagonists stop reflecting and start reacting. The dialogue is sparse, with silences and ambiance doing much of the storytelling. At times, I wondered whether the growing silence magnified the nightmarish feeling that envelops the characters as we approach the film's climax.

Thematically, the film explores free will, caught between love, crime, loyalty, and guilt. There's also a strong human-machine dynamic: the locomotive becomes a place of solace for Lantier, while human relationships plunge him into turmoil. The central female figure is not a classic femme fatale, but rather a prism through which trauma and vulnerability are examined.

Jean Gabin is compelling as Jacques Lantier, a man whose calm exterior hides a storm of inner turmoil. With just a glance or slight movement, Gabin conveys the strain of holding back a violent side - the beast lurking beneath his skin.

Simone Simon plays Séverine, a mixture of allure, longing, fear, and guilt - a catalyst for conflict who tries to escape the cycle of male dominance, unaware that her actions only tighten the noose around her. Fernand Ledoux gives depth to Roubaud, a jealous and insecure man whose grip on his actions slips gradually, inviting violence as his only language.

Blanchette Brunoy appears as Flore, a gentle and caring figure - perhaps Lantier's last anchor to human warmth. Yet her tenderness cannot compete with Séverine's magnetism or with the silent darkness that descends when the locomotive falls quiet.

"La Bête Humaine" delivers a powerful psychological drama that neither accuses nor explains, but instead reveals flawed decisions, emotional wounds, and human fragility. It's an essential stop for anyone drawn to grim, unsettling thrillers from 1930s world cinema.

The first thing to mention about this movie is that it is so far ahead of its time, and in almost every way. The acting is much more subtle than what one might expect from a movie from the thirties. The camera work is fantastic but, like the acting, subtle. And the story was incredibly powerful. It had me echoing the title of the film in my head, as there are so many possible applications and implications. This is also, in my opinion, an underrated movie, which lacks none of the depth found in say, a Fellini film, but manages to cut to heart of things without hesitation. And the finale is one that I will not soon forget, similar to many Hitchcock films which don't rely so much on an explosive climax as a sudden release of the tension that has been gradually building. For me, this is quite close to a perfect film.

In this classic adaptation of Emile Zola's novel, a tortured train engineer (Jean Gabin) falls in love with a troubled married woman (Simone Simon) who has helped her husband commit a murder.

Renoir confessed that at the time when he wrote the screenplay, he had not read Zola's novel in over 25 years: "While I was shooting, I kept modifying the scenario, bringing it closer to Zola ... the dialogue which I gave Simone Simon is almost entirely copied from Zola's text. Since I was working at top speed, I'd re-read a few pages of Zola every night, to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything." Now, I never read the novel at all, and I suspect most who have seen the film have not either. Perhaps this could be a strike against it, but it seems to me that the more obscure the novel, the more liberty you can take. Zola may not be "obscure", but certainly not the big name he once was.

The fact this is considered a precursor to film noir make it all the more interesting. Indeed, it has all the grit of a noir, and the murder aspects make it appropriate to be put in the genre. I suppose it could be called this... now I am curious what other films are considered precursors and at what point the genre came into its own.

The two most noted elements of Jean Renoir's classic "poetic realist" precursor to film noir are indeed the two elements I felt worked more as ends in themselves than seminal features of the story. They are the use of the train as "one of the film's main characters," as Renoir himself describes, and the characterization of Simone Simon's "femme fatale." There is genuinely palpable sensory vibrance in the extensive book-ending sequences of Jacques, played by Jean Gabin, and his best friend utterly obsessed by manning a steaming, chugging locomotive as it speeds down railroads, in and out of pitch black tunnels, and blackens their faces with the smoke it incessantly pumps into the sky. The flames of the furnace, the peripheral landscape speeding by. We have the feeling not of watching reality but of being occupied by it, a feeling prolonged as we experience, as if for the first time, the impact of abruptly emerging from a tunnel, ultimately screeching to a halt in the linear spectacle of a vast rail yard.

I suppose the speeding train is supposed to spark the fierce percussion that outlines the film. Other than these two extended set pieces, La Bete Humaine is a succession of mercurial sketches. It all flows from labor and of the limited time stolen from labor. It's a film of hurried transitions, where all appear to be perpetually passing through doors or climbing stairs or peering out windows. Volumes are spoken when the seductive wife of one of Jacques' colleagues is greeted into her lustful godfather's study while the door is warily closed behind her. A reckless Jacques flees the dance hall unobserved by the dancers, engrossed in their ecstasy. I was intrigued that we see the moments before and after all the murders and seductions but not they themselves. So many crisp exchanges of glances. The blackening impact of a wife's chance admission is found in the way she and her aggressively jealous husband can't bear to look each other in the eye.

Uncharacteristically of me, I found the remake much more affecting. Fritz Lang's Human Desire is, to me, the stronger film in terms of character. La Bete Humaine gets its themes across in its own restless way, but the result is lightweight in effect, while Lang's 1954 version is unyielding in depicting the spiritual isolation of the characters. He punctuates the dramatic action with threatening shots of the many railroad tracks interlacing and breaking away. He needs not brandish any certainty of intention for them to act as metaphor for the characters' paths tying themselves in knots. Lang remained in the shadows as a more effective way of showcasing a distinctive style. Strait-jacketing its insight and intensity, Human Desire is the more resonating parable for the shadows of human rationale and the distortion of the heart, and of desperate characters who lead disappointed lives.

Renoir cast Simone Simon as the adulterous wife at the center of Emile Zola's falling house of cards. He posits that the cute, innocent, kittenish women are the ones to watch out for because you are so enamored with their sweet and endearing nature that you would never suspect them of manipulating you. Well, that is very true. All of us, men and women alike, have encountered a female of this deceptive kind. She is a femme fatale in her own right. But Simon remains in the role of an exotic object, rather than meeting the male characters on their own level, the way Gloria Grahame does in Human Desire. Grahame was always seductive enough to make you crazy, but so audacious. There wasn't a demure bone in her ferociously sexy body, but that made her even more effectively cunning and guileful. She came at her male puppets headlong, and matched their presence as well as their wits.

Grahame and Glenn Ford remain sympathetic in their own respective ways, though one is in some sense a champion and the other is an adversary, just like Gabin and Simon here, but Grahame and Ford evoke a more lucid understanding of their desires, and in the face of the cruelty and ruthlessness in getting what they want, regardless of how far they unravel each other's darkest colors, despite the scorpion-like sidestepping around their flirtatious relationship. Accordingly, Human Desire is a boldly familiarizing study of the sense of right and wrong, achieving its shadowy effect by aiming for your heart and loins rather than only your cerebrum. The development of the drama in La Bete Humaine could be totaled in roughly ten or fifteen close-ups. Renoir just bulks up the lonesome hardships of his three central characters in a wholly animated world of locations and things. If one doesn't totally take in the materiality of the rail yards, rooming quarters and dance halls, the incessant coming and going on platforms and in corridors, the buzz and capricious commotion grinding amidst any personal dilemmas, we can barely be so involved in the uninvited and unconscionable devastation brought down on the three jinxed protagonists.

At any rate, in its own right, La Bete Humaine is a fine piece of stylized realism about disillusionment, done with an embellished aestheticism that, while it draws more attention to its representational elements, is still what gave Renoir's great films Grand Illusion and The River such beauty, humor and vitality. It is best to see this film unfettered by Fritz Lang's later adaptation, to take into account all of the fixations of its own time and culture without any outside influences, to see it as its own (human) beast.

Somehow the 'greatness' of this movie has always eluded me. The last time I saw it on the big screen was about 5 or 6 years ago when a small art house devoted one day to a Jean Gabin trilogy and I felt strongly that the other two (Quai des Brumes and Le jour se Leve) left this one for dead. Three Jean Gabin films were released in 1938; this one, Quai des Brumes and Recif de corail, in which he was again teamed with Michel Morgan but even a screenplay by Charles Spaak couldn't do much for a hackneyed plot. The great Julien Carette on the other hand, who scores heavily here as Pecqueux, had nine films released that year and managed a better batting average than Gabin. It's hard to put one's finger on the problem; possibly it helps if you've read the book, part of a cycle of nine novels by Emile Zola but given the ratio of the reading public to the cinema going public that's not really good enough, an adaptation of even the largest selling novel should be accessible to non-readers. In my case an aversion to the Simone Simons of this world probably didn't help; the wide-eyed little-girl who expects hot-blooded men to roll over and play dead every time she looks cute will, I suppose, always be with us, witness Simon's natural successors Goldie Hawn and Vanessa Paradis but I was unable to detect even a tissue of sexual chemistry between Gabin and Simon though other viewers may disagree. Nor was I able to swallow easily Gabin's uncontrollable and inexplicable 'rages' - apparently the novel offers a 'hereditary' theory. On the other hand Gabin is always highly watchable, Fernand Ledoux, little known outside France, is an excellent actor and Julien Carrette is beyond praise. The film is now available in another trio format, a three-DVD package of Jean Renoir films and once again the other two, Le Crime de Monsiour Lange and La Grande Illusion, leave this one standing.

Jean Renoir's work has been the best of all possible cinemas in the French thirties:a ruthless bourgeois wholesale massacre (la chienne,1931,Boudu sauvé des eaux,1932),Italian neorealism ten years before Rossellini,DeSica et al(Toni,1934),cinema verité before Godard (la vie est à nous ,1936)romantic and tragic pastoral,(une partie de campagne,probably his masterpiece,1936),pacifism(la grande illusion,1937,his most overrated,thus the most popular),history (la revolution française,1938)then "la bête humaine".

"La bête humaine" is arguably the best Zola screen adaptation.Seventeenth part of the Rougon-Macquart family saga-one of the peaks of French lit in the 19th century-,this could be the best with the exceptions of "l'assommoir" and "Germinal".The hero is a son of Gervaise Macquart ,Jacques Lantier.He was not mentioned in any of the previous books,because Gervaise had only 3 children (Nana,Etienne(in Germinal) and Claude (in l'oeuvre),and Zola needed one more,so he made up this fourth child from start to finish.What he needed was a hero with a history of mental illness (stemming from alcohol).Jean Gabin portrays Jacques with a sublime conviction:the scene in which he tries to strangle Blanchette Brunoy to whom he confesses he can't help it,he can't escape the terrible fate which is in store for him.

When he meets Severine(Simone Simon,the future heroine of Tourneur's "cat people'(1942)),and is attracted by her sexually,the woman,whose husband (Fernand Ledoux) is anything but handsome, feels in deep in her perverse soul, that she's found the right killer,because she has discovered he's unable to keep his self-control .

Some scenes are absolutely unforgettable:the beginning,which films the railroad tracks as never before;the railroad men dance,during which a murder is committed while a singer is crooning an old song,"le petit coeur de Ninon";the final,faithful to Zola to a fault: a train,belting in the night,gone mad,which becomes a metaphor not only for Lantier's descent into hell,but for the country (it's 1938!) heading for the darkness.Renoir had transposed the action in th thirties.These dazzling pictures perfectly echo Zola's extraordinary lines:"Elle roulait,roulait sans fin,comme affolée de plus en plus par le bruit de son haleine"(It was rolling,endlessly rolling,as if it were more and more panic-stricken by the sound of its breath).

Remake by Fritz Lang in 1954 :"human desire" with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame;although I admire Fritz Lang very much,I think his effort is neatly inferior.

The point that you really could do with reading at least some of Zola's mammoth saga is well taken - I've only read Germinal so I'm afraid that lets me out. The many puzzling bits in the plot would probably not be: why such fleeting references to ancestral drunkeness and epilepsy, what happened to Cabuche, were Jacques and Bess in a serious sexual relationship?

Basically outraged and cuckolded middle-aged husband murders beautiful young wife's childhood ancient sugar daddy, she (Simon) drifts into stocky Gabin's and/or a lithe young man's arms, sex and violence result as surely as the earthy pre-War French trains ran on time. Some marvellously atmospheric nitrate b&w photography even when under the arc-lights, some scintillating and also some surprisingly clumsy framings from Renoir, some tremendous acting from the leads and trains, some brief but jarring full orchestral incidental music, and what are we left with all these decades later? A clever, well-made, entertaining and then-popular now relatively ignored (IMDB eg Bete Humaine 17 Amelie 1033) film applauded to the rafters as Art because it's Renoir. There could be no other outcome for this film - it was Fated to be Art after all!

It's very good and been one of my favourites for decades now, not as essential mind furniture but more as an enjoyably engrossing proto-noir romp with subtitles.

"The human beast" is above all a love story, but it's quite an atypical love story, because of the way it ends, and because of the complex personalities of the two main characters. specially the man that Gaib plays, a man that's tormented by his past, by the sins of his ancestors and by a powerful impulse that forces him to hurt the people that he loves. The sober touch of Renoir and the matchless beauty of Simone Simon do the rest.

A nice drama. Those ones who love classic films will surely love this film.

*My rate: 7/10

I recently saw the remake of this which was rather interesting and found it entertaining. Then, this came and I decided to see it so I could compare both versions. They are different and I liked them both with both having subtle and pertinent differences all good. This one is a French film and one must take that into consideration when watching for this very important reason. It is not uncommon for the French culture to support marriage and at the same time having a lover on the side too. This applies to both spouses and not necessarily endorsed or supported but perhaps tolerated for reasons I don't care to explore. With that in mind, the movie has more meaning in certain scenes. I enjoyed the trains of old and who doesn't like a good movie with trains in them? Objectively speaking, it is shocking what men and women will do when it comes to sex and lust. Nothing is off the table when the desires of the flesh are activated and then unleashed. Many a murder, robbery and perversion is done in this mindset and for those few moments people literally go out of their minds, lose all reason and let their inner beasts out to play and cause harm. Once completed, shame and guilt visit until either one repents (changes in the Greek) or has to have another fix. Being addicted to dysfunction is a curse and can only end one way. Repentance on the other hand leads one to a better way and literally away from the fallen deed or mishap. This principal is acted out and shown quite well in this movie. Good sandwich (French bread) movie and a tasty drink with some chocolate recommended while watching. The nature of the human always makes for good story telling

I just saw it today and I was terribly disappointed. Jean Gabin is one of my favorite actors and Renoir is one hell of a director too. Also it had the gorgeous Simone Simon, so what could go wrong? Well it was just too thin! It's like it just speeds through a plot and hope you get the most of it. The character development is really poor, the interactions are often rather silly and Simon seemed quite awkward.

Not too say it's bad. It's entertaining enough and the frames are excellent. One of Gabins least convincing performances but hell that still makes it a good one. And I did quite enjoy Gabins character's humorous friend.

Overall it's only decent. Not a film I would care to watch again.

Based on the Emile Zola novel of the same name, you of course expect this film to channel the darker sides of man, and show his animal nature. The beginning sequence on the train is brilliant, with the awesome power, noise, and smoke really setting the tone. Unfortunately the rest of the film didn't live up to this beginning. There are issues that stem back to Zola himself, whose theories about the blood line of a family being poisoned by its ancestors were pseudo-scientific at best. The result is that it's hard to believe the violence that at times suddenly possesses the character of Lantier (Jean Gabin). Simone Simon is a treat to watch and suitably underhanded in her dealings with men, but there is something too cool – too lacking in real passion – about the movie as a whole. The two male performances – Gabin's and that of Fernand Ledoux, Simon's jealous husband – are flat. Zola believed that "love and death, possessing and killing, are the dark foundations of the human soul", and while all of these things are represented by director Jean Renoir, they don't always feel authentic.

Also, I don't mean to go off on a "the book was better than the movie" rant, particularly as the novel itself wasn't Zola's best work, but I would point out that one of the more memorable parts in it was the slow poisoning taking place in a house near a train crossing, and this was a story line that was one of those excised by Renoir. He is also sloppy about other parts of the novel, and when I read later that his screenplay was rushed and that when he started filming he hadn't read the novel in 25 years, I wasn't surprised. It's not horrible by any means, and in some of the train imagery you can see Renoir's influence on films like 1985's "Runaway Train" with Jon Voigt, but it fails to live up to its potential.

Question 1: What makes a person kill another human being? Psychological incorrect would be the best way to make a summary of this movie. There's no common sense just the worst kind of animal behavior all through the movie. An adulterer is murdered. But the wife can't be with her husband after the murder. She finds herself a new lover. She wants her lover to kill her husband. No sensibility here just wanting, having, getting. This is called the peak of the french poetic realism, but question 2: Can you call this film realistic?

See this movie if you're interested in Renoir, Gabin or early Film Noir, but if you're NOT into films with deeper psychologic meaning just stay away. And tip 1: read the opening by Émile Zola it sort of explains everything.