Noir City: The Human Beast (La bête humaine)
February 22, 2024
Adapting Émile Zola’s novel about a working-class man whose “hereditary flaw” causes psychotic episodes, director Renoir tells the bleak story with unsentimental empathy. When the man falls for the wife of a railway official, herself damaged by abuse and exploitation, they are on track for inevitable tragedy.
Individual Tickets: $16 | $11 SIFF Members - Select showtime to purchase
Passes: $150 | $125 SIFF Members
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
In the 1930s, Jean Gabin brought a gallery of doomed anti-heroes to life with a blend of poetic fatalism and blunt proletarian defiance, becoming the first global icon of the noir spirit. He personally selected Jean Renoir, after their collaboration on the classic La Grande Illusion (1937), to direct La bẻte humaine, adapted from a novel by Émile Zola. Untrammeled by Hollywood censorship, they stayed true to Zola’s disturbing conception of Gabin’s character: a decent working-class man whose “hereditary flaw” causes violent psychotic episodes, mostly aimed at women. When he falls in love with the wife of a railway official, herself damaged by a history of abuse and exploitation, they are on track for inevitable tragedy. Renoir gives the film a gritty, neorealist flavor (Gabin, a train enthusiast, learned to drive a locomotive for his role) and instills the bleak story with unsentimental empathy. —Film synopsis courtesy of Noir City
- Original Language Title: La bête humaine
- Director: Jean Renoir
- Principal Cast: Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux, Blanchette Brunoy, Gérard Landry
- Country: France
- Year: 1938
- Running Time: 100 min.
- Producer: Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim
- Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Denise Leblond
- Cinematographers: Curt Courant
- Editors: Suzanne de Troeye, Marguerite Renoir
- Music: Joseph Kosma
- Website: Official Film Website
- Filmography: The Rules of the Game (1939), The Grand Illusion (1937), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
- Language: French
- US Distributor: Janus Films