What can I say about Jean Renoir? In my humble opinion, he is perhaps the best that ever was, if you discount, Kurosawa or Fellini or Bergman or . . . ok, ok, so I’m not ready to pronounce him the greatest, but based on his output before 1940, he’d have to be in the top five. His The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu, 1939) has never been out of the Sight and Sound critics top ten since the poll’s inception in 1952, and since 1962, it has never been below number three.

Sandwiched between certified classics La Grande illusion (1937) and Rules, La Bête Humaine (1938) doesn’t have the critical reputation of either, but 70 years after the fact, that works in it’s favor. When you come to a film with the reputation of Rules, there’s a terrible weight of expectations. There’s can be a tendency to watch it with one eye on its status as certified icon, trying to see what makes it so great, and it’s more difficult to take it on it’s own terms. But with La Bête Humaine, there are no such impediments . . . you can watch it for what it is.

And what it is is an early example of film noir, one of the first. Based on the novel by Emile Zola, it’s not as dark as later, post-war examples of the genre. Its cinematography (by Curt Courant) is more in terms of grays than films like Double Indemnity (1944) or The Killers (1946). Moreover, it has tragic dimension that is lacking in more typical noirs, with their dark, ultra-cynical viewpoint. Here, the undoing of the protagonist is due to a tragic flaw in its hero as much as it is to a woman gone bad, as much to fate as it is to the fatale.

La Bête Humaine means “The Human Beast,” and it refers to one Jacques Lantier, played by Jean Gabin, doubtless the most beloved French star of his day. In other Renoir films of the period (Les Bas-fonds, La Grande illusion), he exudes humanity and compassion, which dovetails nicely with the director’s sensibilities. In La Bête Humaine, Renoir puts these qualities to good use, generating tremendous sympathy for a deeply flawed human being. Typical of Renoir, in this film, we are encouraged to care, and care deeply, for our flawed hero.

Lantier is a locomotive engineer on the Paris to Le Havre run; in the opening, dialog-free sequence, we see his train hurtling toward Le Havre, with him and his fireman (Carette) at the controls. And right of f the bat we sense that the film — and perhaps Lantier’s life — will tear along at break-neck speed like that train. He’s named his train La Lison, and cares for it in obsessive detail. In the opening minutes, as La Lison glides into the station, the camera caresses the engine in loving detail — twice! — and the intention is clear: there is a certain perversity to Lantier’s love, a certain fixation on the train as an objet du désir.

We soon learn that Lantier is afflicted with an hereditary madness. It is only through his obsession with his work, his obsession with trains that he manages to keep the mania under control. Rather than telling us all of this in a gout of exposition, Renoir shows us in one economical scene: as Lantier begins to make love to his paramour (Blanchette Brunoy), the rage comes upon him and he begins to strangle her. At that moment, a train roars past, and he is distracted by it enough to come to his senses, knocked back on his heels by what he was about to do.

Meanwhile, Le Havre Stationmaster Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) has discovered that his wife Séverine (Simone Simon) has been carrying on with her rich, childhood guardian. He becomes obsessed with this, plots to murder him, with Séverine’s assistance, on the Paris to Le Havre run, and that’s where fate takes a hand: on the train is Lantier, returning to his one true love La Lison, and he is the only witness to whodunit.

So begins the end of Lantier, as Séverine sets her hooks in him, first to keep him quiet about the murder, then to do in her husband, but . . . well, that’s all I’ll say, except to remember his fatal flaw, remember what makes him La Bête Humaine. And in reality, the notion is that by film’s end, we’re not sure that Lantier is the only human beast around. All involved have not wholly honorable motives, all have obsessions that drive them to do what they do. The Stationmaster is obsessed with his wife’s infidelities, and her use of them to further his career. Although Séverine’s motives are the least well-delineated, there’s the hint of sexual abuse about her relationship with her godfather; perhaps her inciting of Roubaud to murder is not entirely accidental.

As a matter of fact, there is a whiff — just a whiff, mind you — of deviance in the past of both Séverine and Lantier. Not well articulated, not spelled out in flashback as it would be today, but there nevertheless. Lantier’s paramour, who lives with his godmother, is his cousin Flore, and it is clear that being raised together, they have developed a strong emotional bond. It is possible that with their not-so-savory connections to their godparents, he and Séverine are intended to be doubles, doppelgängers, two sides of the human beast coin.

Although it’s human drama that ultimately interests Renoir, equally important as characters in La Bête are the trains. In fact, I am convinced that this is one of the best train movies ever made. No-one, with the possible exception of Andrei Konchalovsky in Runaway Train (1985), has photographed locomotives with more kinetic fury. Although some shots are obviously under cranked, others look absolutely real. And in fact, Renoir used a platform car to which all his equipment was lashed; the film was shot at speeds of 60 miles per hour. On the introduction included on the Criterion DVD, Renoir tells of one miscalculation that almost wiped his nephew Claude on a tunnel wall.

All it pays off on screen, from that opening shot, where Lantier is hurtling toward his doom, to the final scene that takes place along the same stretch of track. Throughout the film, we are never far from a train. They propel the film, drive it forward, and give it a sleek, streamlined feel. Often, amid seemingly innocuous dialog, a train suddenly punctuates the scene, roaring past in the background. It is a mark of Renoir’s genius that these visual and aural motifs are woven so powerfully into the picture.

And now, for a long-ish video that contains the entire, fabulous opening scene, as well as the cheesy prologue, in the words of Zola, that I’d bet my bottom dollar was foisted upon Renoir. It’s dark, but hopefully you can get the gist. Enjoy!

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