La Bête Humaine

La Bête humaine

Origins and Preparation.

Jean Gabin was scheduled to make a film about railways, directed by Jean Gremillon and produced by the Hakim brothers. There are differing accounts of why the project fell through. Either the Hakims ultimately turned it down, or Gabin was not happy with the script. The upshot was that Robert Hakim proposed La Bête humaine to Renoir, and he agreed, because: “Gabin and I wanted to play with trains.” 1

He was able to gather around him a group of regular collaborators. Joseph Kosma, responsible for the music, was on his fourth film with Renoir. Amongst the actors were, apart from Gabin, Julien Carette and Jenny Hélia. Technicians included his then partner, Marguerite Houlet Renoir, who, in addition to being his regular editor throughout the 1930s, had encouraged his involvement in leftist politics. Thus all his films from 1934-1939, including the costume pictures, can be regarded as, to borrow a term from modern British drama, “State of the Nation” films. One can even make a case to include in this category a couple of films from earlier in the decade.

Marguerite as the maid in Une Partie de campagne , with Georges Darnoux (Henri, facing camera) and Jacques Brunius (Rodolphe). She is commenting (subtitle) on the amorous exhortations of her boss (played by Jean Renoir). He has just left the frame.

Renoir’s art owes a great deal to Marguerite’s skills as an editor, as well as a likely influence on subject matter, and how it was treated.

Though he had not worked with the director of photography ( chef opérateur ), Curt Courant, before, his nephew Claude Renoir was camera operator, Courant’s chief assistant, and his son Alain was the most junior member of the camera crew. His nephew had also worked regularly with him since the middle of the decade, on the more low budget films as director of photography, on the more expensive and prestigious projects, as assistant to established figures such as Courant in this case, Christian Matras on La grande illusion . Even then, his creative input as a choreographer of camera movement was of major importance.

There was another Claude Renoir working on the film: Jean’s younger brother, Claude Renoir ainé (the elder). Production designer Eugène Lourié (on his third film with Renoir) recalls: “We called them Claude Senior and Claude Junior.” 2

Shooting.

In 1961, Renoir was filmed introducing twenty of his films, which were scheduled to be presented on television, something which apparently never happened. Talking about La Bête humaine , he described it as:

“a rather difficult film to shoot, since much of it takes place on locomotives. You can’t shoot on a locomotive the way you can in a studio. There was so much to install. I must say that the state railway system was marvellous, they helped us, gave us some extraordinary assistants who took part in the film, who advised us, who prevented us from making mistakes. Because here again I insisted on exterior reality, I wanted very much for it to be respected ... “3

In his memoirs, Renoir stresses the importance of this aspect of his art:

“When I decided to shoot with all these hindrances I encountered lively opposition. It was pointed out to me that mock-ups had been perfected to the point where it was impossible to tell them from first-hand shooting.

“But I was unshakeable in my belief in the influence of the setting on the actors, and fortunately I won the day. Gabin and Carette could never have played so realistically in front of an artificial background, if only because the very noise forced them to communicate by means of gestures.” 4

Above: Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin) indicating what he wants his fireman Pecquex (Carette) to do.

Right: Later, Pecquex getting Lantier’s attention.

Amongst the contributions of the state railway system was:

“a track that wasn’t being used during the time we were shooting the film. On this track we put a train, composed of a locomotive, our locomotive, our character (“La Lison” in Zola, usually “Bess” in the film’s subtitles), the one we photographed. Behind it, we had a flatcar on which we had two generators to provide the electricity. We lit the locomotive exactly as if it were a character in a studio: instruments, lights, backlighting, everything you need ... To reach sixty miles an hour in a hurry, we had another engine push us from behind ... We did it with two locomotives ...

“My nephew, the camera operator, Claude Renoir, was almost knocked off once. He was in charge of a camera that was against the side of the locomotive. Everything had been measured. The camera was fixed against the side of the locomotive, but there’d been a mistake in the calculations ...

“... and the camera stuck out maybe one centimetre, and when we entered a tunnel – we were filming in a tunnel – the camera was knocked off and smashed. Luckily Claude saw what was coming just before it happened, he guessed it, and he flattened himself against the train and wasn’t knocked off too.” 5

Lourié adds further detail:

“We felt that this continual presence of the railroad in their private lives was a powerful and important element of the drama. I proposed to Jean that we locate the Roubaud’s lodging inside the railroad yard, tying it intimately to the surrounding steam and noise so that he would have an immediate close view of these activities.

“As we had decided against using rear projection in our sets, I proposed to erect a high platform, the height of the second-floor apartment. This platform would be placed smack between a rail junction in the railroad yard, and on it I would build the interior window walls of Roubaud’s apartment.”

Jean Renoir (right) and cameraman Curt Courant shooting La Bête humaine. They are in the fragment of the set of the Roubauds’ apartment which Lourié had built overlooking the marshalling yards at Le Havre.

“Here Jean would shoot the scenes played close to the window ... (which) could be shot with the camera looking down, encompassing the view of the railroad yard with its passing locomotives ... However, the entire set of the Roubaud apartment would be built on the stage of the Billancourt studios in Paris. The set would be complete, including a repetition of the window built in Le Havre. As the view from the window (if you are shooting straight) would be above the railroad lines ... I had to back the windows on the stage with a photographic enlargement of the view, taken with a level camera from our platform in Le Havre. We had done scenes the same way in Grand Illusion using the view from window of the barracks yard ...” 6

Novel and Film.

“Because the France of today is not that of Napoleon III, and whatever she is, with her qualities and her failings, I deem her worthy of defending to the very end by all her children. The author of J’Accuse would without doubt be in agreement with me on this point.” Jean Renoir. 7

With these words, Renoir justified some of the crucial changes he had made to Émile Zola’s novel when adapting it for the screen. They appeared three weeks before his film La Bête humaine had its première. This film, according to its opening credit, was “inspired” by the novel by Émile Zola. Unstated but implicit in Renoir’s argument and attitudes is the belief that the vision of France articulated in his art may have an effect on the politics of his era, and that he, both as an artist and as a citizen, is an active agent in the historic process.

Conversely, Zola gives Les Rougon-Macquart, his great cycle of twenty novels of which La Bête humaine was the seventeenth, the subtitle “The Natural and Social history of a family under the Second Empire.” Zola is setting out to write history,

© 2009/2013 James Leahy . albeit history of a new and experimental kind, whereas Renoir’s ambition in the late 1930s was to take part in the making of history. Zola’s novel appeared more than twenty years after the debacle which its ending anticipates, and which he was to describe in his novel of that name, the nineteenth of his cycle. Renoir’s film first appeared on the Paris screens nearly eighteen months before the comparable debacle experienced by his generation, when France’s Third Republic collapsed before German military power and efficiency, just as Napoleon III’s Second Empire had seventy years earlier

In 1938, the threat to France, indeed to most of Europe, came from Nazi Germany, a state one of whose cornerstones was institutionalised anti-Semitism. Forty years earlier, when Zola wrote his pamphlet J’Accuse , he wrote it to attack the institutionalised anti-Semitism of the French army and state. This had led twice to the conviction for treason by courts martial of a Jewish captain, Alfred Dreyfus. Study of the trials led to Zola’s realization of the lack of evidence against Dreyfus, and of the likelihood of another officer’s guilt. Thus he chose to join the ultimately successful campaign to vindicate Captain Dreyfus and secure his release. In this, he had chosen to participate in the making of history rather than limit himself to recounting it. Thus Renoir believes that Zola, forty years later, would have been active in the defence of France, whatever her faults.

Zola’s novel does not spare the Second Empire, nor those living under its rule. The main action of both novel and film is precipitated by the murder on a train of Grandmorin (Jacques Berlioz), the president of the railway, by one of his employees (Raubaud, an assistant station master, played by Fernand Ledoux) and the latter’s wife Séverine (Simone Simon), who, as a girl, was seduced by Grandmorin. An off-duty engine driver, Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin), witnesses fragments of these events (what he sees, and from where, differs from novel to film). However, he chooses to limit his testimony to the officials investigating the murder on account of his developing fascination with Séverine. Ultimately, this is to lead to murder. For a time, she becomes his lover, then his innate compulsion to make killing the culmination of sexual desire is reawakened, and he murders her.

© 2009/2013 James Leahy . The investigation of the first murder leads to the revelation of Grandmorin’s predilection for debauching teenage girls. In the novel, this leads to a political scandal that reaches as far as the ears of the Emperor himself, then to a cover-up (a classic and repeated political manoeuvre in both the Second Empire and the Third Republic) executed by a civil servant in the Emperor’s confidence, though against the Emperor’s wishes. Renoir omits virtually the whole of this account of bourgeois institutions and politics, and the many passages and characters that make it a comprehensive indictment of all levels of society. He rightly points out that the scope of a film is much smaller than that of a novel, and requires concentration on a central thread without the digressions and sub-plots a novel can accommodate. 8

Setting the story in contemporary France enabled the film to be brought in for a reasonable budget. Moreover, Renoir argues, the railways, trains and engines of 1869 are now “a trifle ridiculous”. 9 In fact Zola and his creation Lantier regard eighty kilometres an hour (around fifty mph) as “a dizzying speed”. 10

Renoir also puts his changes to the end of the story down to the technology of his time: a “mad” train, racing through the countryside without driver or fireman, has become “pretty improbable”. 11

Be that as it may, there is an important political significance to Renoir’s new ending. In the novel, Lantier has taken up with Philomène, the lover of his fireman Pecqueux, who catches them together. A few days later Pecqueux attacks Lantier in a drunken rage. In their struggle, they fall off the footplate and under the train, which is packed with soldiers on the way to the front following the declaration of war on Prussia. The train races on and on:

“What did the victims matter that the machine destroyed on its way? Wasn’t it bound for the future, heedless of spilt blood? With no human hand to guide it through the night, it roared on and on, a blind and deaf beast let loose amid death and destruction, laden with cannon-fodder, these soldiers already silly with fatigue, drunk and bawling.” 12

Renoir’s climax occurs the morning after Séverine’s murder. Lantier, heavy with despair, plods to join Pecqueux (Julien Carette) on the footplate just in time to take the engine out.

Pecqueux, unaware of the murder, tries to comfort his mate, but Lantier is inconsolable. He leaps to his death from the cab when the train is at full speed, having overpowered Pecqueux, who has tried to stop him.

Pecqueux recovers and takes control of the unmanned engine. Exercising skills beyond his career grading, he brings the train smoothly and safely to a halt, thus illustrating the reliability and responsibility of the working class.

Pecqueux’s calm efficiency in the crisis brings to mind Renoir’s account of an incident he witnessed the previous winter during a drive from Paris to Nice. He had stopped overnight in the town of Tain-l’Hermitage, where there was a bridge across the Rhône. A storm had produced floods and landslides, and the bridge was closed. There was a major back-up of traffic in the town, including several petrol tankers. In the middle of the night, the carburettor and exhaust of one of these caught fire. If the fire spread to the tanker’s load and thus to the other tankers:

“The whole town was going to blow up. At that moment, the existence of Tain-l’Hermitage depended upon the coolness of a little chap who, confronted by the blaze, fought it calmly with an extinguisher and some rags. A panic was getting underway, but the lorry drivers did not panic. They crowded round their comrade to help him. The self-control of these workers was justified by the danger. The fire was extinguished. People put their minds at ease, then drank to this with a new bottle of white wine.” 13

His concentration on a smaller canvas than that of a novel by a generous writer such as Zola results in Renoir placing too much thematic and symbolic weight on the shoulders of Jacques Lantier, more than the character can bear. He is not only an embodiment of the dignity of labour. Indeed, when some journalists invented reports that Gabin had driven trains between Paris and Le Havre at 150 km. an hour (around 93 mph) Gabin “considered such reports an insult to the profession of engine driver, which he admired all the more now he knew it well.”14 He is also a working class hero who “interests us as much as King Oedipus.” 15 Tragedy need not confine itself to the fate of kings and warriors; it can be about ordinary people. Thus, in its depiction of Lantier’s struggle with his hereditary compulsion to kill, his fate, “Zola’s La Bête humaine takes its place alongside the great Greek tragedies. Jacques Lantier, simple engine driver on the railway, could be a member of the House of Atreus.” 16

Ultimately, then, it is through Pecqueux, and various anonymous railwaymen seen in incidental moments, that Renoir asserts the dignity of labour, whilst his Lantier is a bauble of fate, unable to choose however hard he struggles to do so. He is a victim as much as the characters played by Gabin in the Marcel Carné films Le Quai des

The generous invention of Zola’s novel (praised by Renoir) offers multiple variations upon a single theme, the survival in modern man of what he calls “the caveman”. Tante Phasie, who brought Lantier up, makes the point explicitly in relation to the railway:

"Oh, it's a wonderful invention, you can't deny it ,,. People travel fast and know more ,,, But wild beasts are still wild beasts, and however much they go on inventing still better machines, there will be wild beasts underneath just the same." 17

Honourable though Renoir’s motivations in changing Zola’s ending were, the disappearance from the film of that image of the journey to destruction is a significant loss. For the modern reader, its meaning extends far beyond the collapse of the Second Empire (or, had Renoir chosen to use it, a prediction of the collapse of the Third Republic). The bond it articulates between human destiny and modern technology evokes more powerfully than any other image the plight of modern man. Well over a century after Zola's novel and well over half a century after Renoir's film, one's sense of a world spinning out of control, and destroying itself with the demands and by-products of its own technology, is ever more acute. Meanwhile, this world’s mendacious leaders stand by concerned mainly with attempting to justify themselves and their actions.

The Creative Process.

It is clear one can think of Renoir’s changes to Zola’s novel as acts of political self- censorship. On this occasion, whilst what he omitted may have disappeared from his conscious awareness, at a deeper level it was not forgotten. When he embarked on a new project most of this material came bubbling out, contributing to the richness of what is probably the richest and most complex of all films, La Règle du jeu .

There’s a murderous jealous rage which puts the lives of by-standers at risk: the pursuit of the poacher Marceau (Carette) by the gamekeeper Schumacher (Gaston Modot).

On the soundtrack, there’s a machine which runs madly out of control: the mechanical organ which La Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio) has presented to his guests as the pride of his collection. Perhaps the mechanism is stuck as a result of being hit by one of the bullets Schumacher has sprayed around, aiming at Marceau.

Effectively, all levels of society apart from the working class are implicated in the events which lead to the death of the hero, and are thus indicted, The working class itself is effectively absent from the film, perceptible only as a trace from elsewhere, from, for example, the manufacturing works that produced the cars boasted about by their owners and their chauffeurs; or from the factory that produced the production model Caudron in which the hero Jurieu (Roland Toutain) has made his record breaking flight. Finally, the film ends with a cover-up.

Renoir has said many things about this film. If one does not know it and love it, these may be regarded as contradictory. For those who do, they evoke the extraordinary artistic achievement of La Règle du jeu , in which Renoir succeeds, apparently casually, in generating a work which integrates into one exciting whole a multiplicity of themes, dramatic and emotional moods, and narrative points of view. In the context of this essay, perhaps the most interesting statement of all Renoir’s statements about La Règle du jeu comes in an interview he gave to Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut: “I had wanted to do The Rules of the Game for a long time, but this desire became clearer while I was shooting La Bête humaine ...” 18

Further Viewing.

Nana (France/Germany 1926) was Renoir’s first adaptation of a Zola novel. Though a disaster commercially, it is now regarded as a major work.

Fritz Lang remade La Bête humaine in Hollywood as Human Desire (U.S.A. 1954); earlier, he had remade Renoir’s first sound masterpiece, La Chienne (France 1931) as Scarlet Street (U.S.A. 1945).

Most of the action of Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command (U.S.A. 1928) occurs in an extended flashback. This ends with a train crash. This is effectively identical to the one anticipated but not occurring at the end of Zola’s La Bête humaine .

Shortly after the successful New York run of La Bête humaine , Preston Sturges opened his Sullivan’s Travels (U.S.A. 1941) with a film within (in fact, a film preceding) the film. This shows a desperate fight in a speeding railway engine. Its climax has the driver (presumably) and his assailant plunging into water the train is crossing on a bridge. They are locked in a fatal embrace. It is as if Sturges has decided cinema screens should not be deprived of the fight on the footplate described by Zola. Renoir altered this so radically as effectively to omit it from his film. With a touch of parody (the fight is just a bit over the top), Sturges has restored the fatal struggle and fall of Lantier and Pecqueux.

When Ken McMullen, Terry James and I started work on the script of Ken's film 1871 , (UK/France/Portugal 1990) Ken had already decided on one thing: our heroine's name was Séverine. This was a hommage more to Renoir's character than Zola's, and the novelist's Nana became more of a model for our story than his La Bête humaine.