LA BETE HUMAINE
France, 1938, 100 minutes, Black and white.
Jean Gabin, Simone Simon.
Directed by Jean Renoir.
La Bete Humaine is a classic film version of Emile Zola’s novel. Directed by the great French director Jean Renoir, it features Jean Gabin at the peak of his pre-war career. It was the period of Pope Le Moko. Zola’s grim story, with a railway setting, is one of man-woman relationships, madness, revenge and murder.. The film shows the obsession of the man, the wiliness of the woman, the inevitable violence.
Fritz Lang remade this story with an American setting as Human Desire, with Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Broderick Crawford, In 1954.
1. The status of the film as a French classic? The work and reputation of the director? Of Jean Gabin? A classic French film of the thirties?
2. The reputation of Emile Zola and the opening, the prologue and its explanation, the tribute to Zola? His insight into France of the 19th and 20th centuries? To the French character, problems?
3. The quality of the black and white photography, the re-creation of France, of the provinces, the importance of the railway and its atmosphere, the style in which it was filmed, trains, stations, yards, railway workings etc.?
4. How insightful was the film in its analysis of motivations for good, for evil? Its premise about the nature of evil, the title and man as a human beast? How pessimistic the outlook?
5. The hero in himself, his qualities, his evil? The importance of his sickness and violence? The sexual overtones and undertones? Family background, the human side of him, his infatuation? His capacity for evil, love, complicity to murder, deceit? How responsible was he for his actions?
6. The contrast of the station master and his strengths and weaknesses of character, his ambitions yet being an ordinary man, the importance of his jealousy. cruelty at home, his love and hate for his wife, the imagining of the murder and his carrying it out, the pressures on his wife and turning her against him, his failure to see what was
Happening an regards his wife and her lover, the foolishness which led to his death? How much of ‘a human beast’?
7. The comparison with his wife? The explanation of her background, her strengths and weaknesses of character, her liaison with the authority, her fears, her husband's attitude and his jealousy? Her complicity in the murder and her subservience to her husband? The chance meeting with the hero and the consequences? Co-operation. love and passion? The idea of murder and her persuading the hero? The irony of herself becoming the victim of his madness? How much was she a human beast?
8. The treatment of the basic triangle? Its portrayal of passion in the French context. the consequences of passion of love and hatred?
9. How authentic was the treatment and the filling in of the background of ordinary people, the detailed attention to daily life especially with the railways?
10. The atmosphere of violence and the ugliness of death?
11. Was this a classic film version of a classic novel?
