France
1938
96 minutes
Black and White
1.33:1
French
324
Based on the classic Emile Zola novel, Jean Renoir’s La bête humaine was one of the legendary director’s greatest popular successes—and earned star Jean Gabin a permanent place in the hearts of his countrymen. Part poetic realism, part film noir, the film is a hard-boiled and suspenseful journey into the tormented psyche of a workingman.
| Jacques Lantier | Jean Gabin |
| Séverine | Simone Simon |
| Pecqueux | Julien Carette |
| Roubaud | Fernand Ledoux |
| Flore | Blanchette Brunoy |
| Philoméne | Jenny Helia |
| Victoire Pecqueux | Colette Regis |
| Madame Misard | Germaine Clasis |
| Judge | André Tavernier |
| Cabuche | Jean Renoir |
| Director | Jean Renoir |
| Producer | Raymond Hakim and Robert Hakim |
| Screenplay | Jean Renoir |
| From the novel by | Émile Zola |
| Production manager | Roland Tual |
| Music | Joseph Kosma |
| Editing | Marguerite Houlet Renoir |
Two new retrospectives happening concurrently on different continents pay serious respect to a pair of thirties French cinema pioneers. First, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jean Renoir is being celebrated with a four-week http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmSeriesSchedule.aspx . . .
The opening minutes of La bête humaine (1938) are a bracing plunge into the materiality of the world. The flames of a locomotive’s furnace, the engineer and stoker utterly absorbed in their work, the landscape speeding by, as seen from the moving train: we have the sensation not of observing . . .
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