La Bête Humaine (film)
Encyclopedia
La Bête Humaine (1938
) is a film
directed by Jean Renoir
, with cinematography
by Curt Courant. The picture features Jean Gabin
, and is based on the novel
of the same name
by Emile Zola
.
The drama is partially set "on a train that may be thought of as one of the main characters in the film."
) who lusts after Séverine Roubaud (Simone Simon
), the wife of his co-worker Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux
).
Roubaud discovers that his young wife, Séverine, has been seduced by her godfather, the wealthy Grandmorin. Jealous, Roubaud forces Séverine to assist in the murder of Grandmorin during a train journey. The murder is witnessed by a railway worker, Jacques Lantier, but he keeps quiet because he is in love with Séverine. Disgusted by what her husband has done, Séverine has an affair with Lantier and pleads with him to kill her cruel husband. Little does she know that Lantier also has a dark secret.
wanted to star in a film about locomotives and wrote a screenplay called Train d'Enfer, that was originally to be directed by Jean Grémillon
. Dissatisfied with the script, Grémillon suggested an adaptation of La Bête humaine
. After his success starring in Renoir's Grand Illusion
(1937), Gabin preferred to work with Jean Renoir
again, and hired him instead of Grémillon. Renoir eventually wrote the script over a period of eight to fifteen days. After its completion, Renoir read the screenplay to Gabin's producer Robert Hakim
, who asked for "trifling modifications".
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."
Filming commenced on August 12, 1938, with exteriors on the Gare Saint-Lazare
and at Le Havre
. Due to running time restrictions, Renoir had to omit several celebrated occurrences from the novel.
, film critic for The New York Times
, gave the film a positive review even though he felt uncomfortable watching the film. He wrote, "It is hardly a pretty picture, dealing as it does with a man whose tainted blood subjects him to fits of homicidal mania, with a woman of warped childhood who shares her husband's guilty secret of murder...It is simply a story; a macabre, grim and oddly-fascinating story. Sitting here, a safe distance from it, we are not at all sure we entirely approve of it or of its telling. Its editing could have been smoother—which is another way of saying that Renoir jerks his camera, jumps a bit too quickly from scene to scene, doesn't always make clear why his people are behaving as they do. But sitting here is not quite the same as sitting in the theatre watching it. There we were conscious only of constant interest and absorption tinged with horror and an uncomfortable sense of dread. And deep down, of course, ungrudged admiration for Renoir's ability to seduce us into such a mood, for the performances which preserved it."
director Fritz Lang
remade the picture as Human Desire
, a film noir
featuring Glenn Ford
, Gloria Grahame
, Broderick Crawford
, among others.
1938 in film
The year 1938 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*January — MGM announces that Judy Garland would be cast in the role of "Dorothy" in the upcoming Wizard of Oz motion picture. Ray Bolger is cast as the "Tinman" and Buddy Ebsen is cast as the "Scarecrow". At Bolger's insistence,...
) is a film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, with cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
by Curt Courant. The picture features Jean Gabin
Jean Gabin
-Biography:Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 22 mi north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly...
, and is based on the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
of the same name
La Bête humaine
La Bête Humaine is an 1890 novel by Émile Zola. The story has been adapted for the cinema on several occasions. It is based around the railway between Paris and Le Havre in the 19th century and is a tense, psychological thriller....
by Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
.
The drama is partially set "on a train that may be thought of as one of the main characters in the film."
Plot
The story centers on a train engineer Jacques Lantier (Jean GabinJean Gabin
-Biography:Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 22 mi north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly...
) who lusts after Séverine Roubaud (Simone Simon
Simone Simon
Simone Thérèse Fernande Simon was a French film actress who began her film career in 1931.-Early life:Born in Béthune, Pas-de-Calais France, she was the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp, and Erma Maria...
), the wife of his co-worker Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux
Fernand Ledoux
Fernand Ledoux was a French film and theatre actor of Belgian origin. He studied with Raphaël Duflos at the CNSAD, and began his career with small roles at the Comédie-Française...
).
Roubaud discovers that his young wife, Séverine, has been seduced by her godfather, the wealthy Grandmorin. Jealous, Roubaud forces Séverine to assist in the murder of Grandmorin during a train journey. The murder is witnessed by a railway worker, Jacques Lantier, but he keeps quiet because he is in love with Séverine. Disgusted by what her husband has done, Séverine has an affair with Lantier and pleads with him to kill her cruel husband. Little does she know that Lantier also has a dark secret.
Cast
- Jean GabinJean Gabin-Biography:Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 22 mi north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly...
as Jacques Lantier - Simone SimonSimone SimonSimone Thérèse Fernande Simon was a French film actress who began her film career in 1931.-Early life:Born in Béthune, Pas-de-Calais France, she was the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp, and Erma Maria...
as Séverine Roubaud - Fernand LedouxFernand LedouxFernand Ledoux was a French film and theatre actor of Belgian origin. He studied with Raphaël Duflos at the CNSAD, and began his career with small roles at the Comédie-Française...
as Roubaud (as Ledoux Sociétaire de la Comédie Française) - Blanchette BrunoyBlanchette BrunoyBlanchette Brunoy was a French actress, who had appeared in over 90 film and television productions between 1936 and 1998....
as Flore - Gérard LandryGerard LandryGérard Landry was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and began acting in 1932 with his first movie Mirages de Paris. He had acted for over fifty years and has been in over ninety films...
as Le fils Dauvergne - Jenny Hélia as Philomène Sauvagnat
- Colette Régis as Victoire Pecqueux
- Claire Gérard as Une voyageuse
- Charlotte Clasis as Tante Phasie, la marraine de Lantier
- Jacques Berlioz as Grandmorin
- Tony Corteggiani as Dabadie, le chef de section
- André Tavernier as Le juge d'instruction Denizet
- Marcel Pérès as Un lampiste
- Jean RenoirJean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
as Cabuche - Julien Carette as Pecqueux
Production
Jean GabinJean Gabin
-Biography:Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 22 mi north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly...
wanted to star in a film about locomotives and wrote a screenplay called Train d'Enfer, that was originally to be directed by Jean Grémillon
Jean Grémillon
Jean Grémillon was a French film director. After directing a number of documentaries during the 1920s, many now lost, he had his first substantial success with the dramatic feature Maldone in 1928...
. Dissatisfied with the script, Grémillon suggested an adaptation of La Bête humaine
La Bête humaine
La Bête Humaine is an 1890 novel by Émile Zola. The story has been adapted for the cinema on several occasions. It is based around the railway between Paris and Le Havre in the 19th century and is a tense, psychological thriller....
. After his success starring in Renoir's Grand Illusion
Grand Illusion (film)
Grand Illusion is a 1937 French war film directed by Jean Renoir, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Spaak. The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.The title of the film comes from a...
(1937), Gabin preferred to work with Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
again, and hired him instead of Grémillon. Renoir eventually wrote the script over a period of eight to fifteen days. After its completion, Renoir read the screenplay to Gabin's producer Robert Hakim
Robert and Raymond Hakim
Robert Hakim and Raymond Hakim were Egyptian-born brothers who usually worked in collaboration as film producers in France and other European countries...
, who asked for "trifling modifications".
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
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
... the dialogue which I gave Simone Simon
Simone Simon
Simone Thérèse Fernande Simon was a French film actress who began her film career in 1931.-Early life:Born in Béthune, Pas-de-Calais France, she was the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp, and Erma Maria...
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."
Filming commenced on August 12, 1938, with exteriors on the Gare Saint-Lazare
Gare Saint-Lazare
Paris Saint-Lazare is one of the six large terminus train stations of Paris. It is the second busiest in Paris, behind the Gare du Nord, handling 274,000 passengers each day.-History:...
and at Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
. Due to running time restrictions, Renoir had to omit several celebrated occurrences from the novel.
Critical reception
Frank S. NugentFrank Nugent
Frank Stanley Nugent was an American journalist, film reviewer, script doctor, and screenwriter who wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for John Ford...
, film critic for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, gave the film a positive review even though he felt uncomfortable watching the film. He wrote, "It is hardly a pretty picture, dealing as it does with a man whose tainted blood subjects him to fits of homicidal mania, with a woman of warped childhood who shares her husband's guilty secret of murder...It is simply a story; a macabre, grim and oddly-fascinating story. Sitting here, a safe distance from it, we are not at all sure we entirely approve of it or of its telling. Its editing could have been smoother—which is another way of saying that Renoir jerks his camera, jumps a bit too quickly from scene to scene, doesn't always make clear why his people are behaving as they do. But sitting here is not quite the same as sitting in the theatre watching it. There we were conscious only of constant interest and absorption tinged with horror and an uncomfortable sense of dread. And deep down, of course, ungrudged admiration for Renoir's ability to seduce us into such a mood, for the performances which preserved it."
Adaptations
In 19541954 in film
The year 1954 in film involved some significant events and memorable ones.-Events:*May 12 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces wife Marion Benda...
director Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
remade the picture as Human Desire
Human Desire
Human Desire is a black-and-white film noir directed by Fritz Lang, and based on the novel La Bête humaine by Émile Zola. The story was filmed twice before: La Bête humaine directed by Jean Renoir and Die Bestie im Menschen .-Plot:Railroad supervisor Carl Buckley gets fired from his job...
, a film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
featuring Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford was a Canadian-born American actor from Hollywood's Golden Era with a career that spanned seven decades...
, Gloria Grahame
Gloria Grahame
Gloria Grahame was an American Academy Award–winning actress.Grahame began her acting career in theatre, and in 1944 she made her first film for MGM. Despite a featured role in It's a Wonderful Life , MGM did not believe she had the potential for major success, and sold her contract to RKO Studios...
, Broderick Crawford
Broderick Crawford
Broderick Crawford was an Academy Award-winning American stage, film, radio and TV actor, often cast in tough-guy roles and best known for his starring role in the television series "Highway Patrol."-Early life:...
, among others.
Awards
Nominations- Venice Film FestivalVenice Film FestivalThe Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
: Mussolini Cup, Best Film, Jean Renoir; 1939.
External links
- La Bête Humaine at Bright Lights Film Journal
- La Bête Humaine at DVD Beaver (includes images)
- La Bête Humaine essay at Criterion Collection by Geoffrey O'Brien
- La Bête Humaine short film clip at You Tube