La bete humaine (1938)

The whirling and thundering train ride in the first images of Renoir's La bete humaine (based on a novel by Zola) a stunning introduction to an interesting, yet at times rather questionable, movie. These images of the speeding train are so vivid (nice tracking shots) that I am tempted to use the expression of "feeling as if you were there". The roaring sound and the almost sea-sick cinematography conveys a sense of a dangerous path. This is also what the film is about, a dangerous path. It is not strange that La bete humaine, with its doomsridden story, is considered to be a sort of noir-before-noir .

Jean Gabin plays a train engineer, Lantier. He loves his trains, he loves his work. When he meets the beautiful Severine something is awoken within him - something dangerous. It turns out that he is driven by dark impulses - rendered as veritable forces - that he cannot handle (these impulses are coupled with some shady ideas about hereditory character traits; his father was an alcoholic). Severine is married to a stationmaster. The husband is jealous because of an affair Severine is supposed to have had with her uncle many years ago. Much plotting takes place, some of it murderous. The stationmaster kills Severine's uncle and Severine tries to make Lantier kill the stationmaster.

La bete humaine chronicles a series of events where men are driven to violence against women, or driven to violence because of their jealousy. In one scene, we see the stationwagon talking to his wife about her uncle. It's a frightening scene that portays psychological violence. But La bete humaine treats its subject in an extremely problematic way. Violence is here almost an expression of a fatalist path; the violence we see is an expression of uncontrollable powers. Lantier is described as a man whose relation to women is necessarily violent. In an early scene, we see him together with a young girl. A romantic moment by the train tracks is suddenly transformed into a murder attempt - the women's scream is droned out by the sound of a roaring train. When Lantier meets Severine, we have the feeling that this will not be a cozy little affair. But strangely, Renoir still tries to infuse their relation with a bit of glossy and even melodramatic romance. The effect is very strange when this glossy romance turns into - well, something else entirely. This mix of the romantic/the foreboding is encapusated in a scene taking place in a dance hall. The music pounds, we see Lantier, increasingly strange-looking. Something weird is happening with the cinematography - the haze Lantier is in is magnificently conjured up.

La bete humaine is rewarding as a film precisely because of its strange perspective. Renoir seems to have been on a roll in his career; a year earlier he made the war movie The Grand Illusion and the year after he made the excellent The Rules of the Game.