La Bete Humaine (1938)

La Bete Humaine, or "The Human Beast", is a contemporized adaptation of the 1890 Emile Zola novel of the same name. Filmmaker Jean Renoir has commented that this movie was made as an excuse for him and star Jean Gabin to play with trains. Gabin is Jacques Lantier, a train conductor who is passionate about his work, and seems like a real good guy save for the occasional homicidal urge. On rare occasion Lantier will have an episode, he zones out and trys to kill the nearest person, though at the beginning of the film he's never actually gone all the way, who wants to bet that changes in the course of the movie? One night Lantier is returning from a visit to Pairs, by train as a passanger to his home in Le Havre. On the course of this journey a wealthy passinger is murdered, not by Lantier but by Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) a station master back in Le Havre. Roubaud has forced his young wife Séverine (Simone Simon) to accompany him on this endeavour (the victim, Grandmorin, was Severines Godfather and former lover). Unlike in the book Lantier doesn't witness the murder, but he is easily able to deduce it. He keeps quite, even lies to the police, and uses this as leverage to get closer to the comely Severine, to whom he has taken a fancy. They actually fall in love, but because of Roubaud extreme jealousy(the cause of his killing Grandmorin) they know that the only way they can be together is for the husband to die. The couple plan on kiling Roubaud, but on the night of the intended murder Lantier backs out, he just can't do it, he's only up to killing when he's in one of his fits. Severine breaks the relationship off, Lantier is devastated, and a fit is most likely coming.

Laniter attributes his occasional lapses into fury to a family history of drunkenness, though he himself is not a drinker. Therefore these episodes are never quite conveniently explained, though I suppose the whole point is todemonstrate the volatile human best the lurks just bellow the surface of all of us. Finally shot film, I love all the scenes in the engine car. Simon and Gabin are good, Julien Carette  provides humane/comic counter point as Lainters friend and co-worker Pecqueux, while Renoir himself plays Cabuche, the man wrongly accused of Grandorins murder. Not as good as Grand Illusion or The Rules of the Game, but intriguing, evocative, and refreshing for its smaller scale. More then the characters or the plot it is Renoirs meditation on, and ability to evoke human weakness, and the sense of angst that permeates the end of the film that makes this work rise up and beyond its station (train joke). Great