Chasing Twinkle Lights

La Bête humaine

Il faut penser à la voie dégager.

on the Roman playwright Plautus Titus Maccius the saying goes "Homo homini lupus" (dt Man a wolf to man ) is back. The bestial nature of man devoted himself to Émile Zola in his 1890 novel, La Bête humaine , the platoon commander of the destructive nature of the Jacques Lantier and the rest of the characters says. For the film adaptation of the novel came in 1938 mainly because the wanted to meet Jean Gabin at the height of his career a childhood dream and play a platoon leader [1] . For his La grande illusion director Jean Renoir was La Bête humaine, however another chance to revel in the poetic realism.

"The steel mass of the locomotive was in my mind a flying carpet of Oriental fairy tale," Renoir wrote in his autobiography about La Bête humaine [2] . The railway theme, it is also that the movie with his sensational opening sequence begins [3] . From the perspective of both driver Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin) and Pecqueux (Julien Carette) follows the journey of the audience of the Paris-Le Havre-Express. One end of the 1930 cinematographic excellence, the brother and cinematographer Claude Renoir, who was filming with his camera on a locomotive attached to the frame, with a tunnel passage, nearly paid with his life [4] .

And as much as the locomotive - Lantier considered "married" with her and calls her affectionately "la Lison" - Its own role in Renoir's film takes, there are but the human characters in the foreground. All, of course Gabin Jacques Lantier, the tragic hero of this story. The driver suffers from a hereditary disease alleged, but he comes from generations of drinkers, according to bias. "Because of you I've become afraid of people," Lantier reveals in the first act towards Flore (Blanchette Brunoy). As a result he suffers from delusional attacks, triggered by women who arouse in him desire [5] that Lantier in poetic sentimentality describes as "bouts of sadness."

"As whether a cloud in my head rises and suddenly everything changed, "says Lantier his attacks and their consequences". Then I'm like a rabid dog bite must be "The scene with the one now introduces Flore Lantier genetic disease that ultimately with the tragic history of La Bête humaine will be responsible. At the same time it shows Lantier but also emotionally involved with Flore. Both assure their love to each other, but the driver pushes the pretty blonde for fear of infringing on its own. When later the femme fatale Séverine (Simone Simon) gets to know his genetic disease, however, seems suddenly to be a problem. Also, his first love proclaimed to Flore.

For O'Shaughnessy Lantier and Séverine are more victims as the cause of their fates [6] , but what is in doubt. Séverine suffers visibly under her outer appearance and thus forms an axis of Flores, who also curses her beauty. Both women are - as far as it concerns Renoir's film - reduced to her appearance. "What I need is not a lover, but a good comrade," said Séverine Lantier then later in a moment of obvious truth. Your gesäuseltes "out of you I have never loved anyone" looks the other hand, more than means to an end, to bring to Lantier, her husband, the stationmaster Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux), to murder for them.

Roubaud in turn gets to know the audience as a friendly and idealistic character. He shows himself as the avenger of the disenfranchised when it advocates a lady and the railway rules against a sugar tycoon. "I make no distinction between the travelers," said Roubaud determined. On the way home, he declines the invitation to a card game to spend time with his wife why he is called a "happy person". But in a society that is dominated by the corrupt and wealthy elite [7] can afford Roubaud not to vex one of them. "You have to visit your godfather," he asks finally, Séverine and release the action occurs.

It responds reluctantly ("All right, I go to him), because they know the price charged by their wealthy godfather for his influence. The consequences are shocked and angry after Roubaud shows that the murder appears to him the only alternative to save the marriage ("We stay together. I swear to you, which will connect us forever"). In a few scenes from the sympathetic Roubaud become suddenly jealous of Control freak ("It is only because I love you"). He has quite obviously scared of losing Séverine, and asks the viewers anyway, why is she married to him, to have no money and seems to be much older.

The inner lives of the characters, however, closes to the public. The murder of Roubaud does not bring him close with his wife, but she finally divided. The affair with Lantier Séverine although he gets to, but it is the station manager does not matter. He loses himself in that card game that he has previously failed. "They have no luck," says his opponent as Roubaud round to Round loses. "No, I have no luck", the Echo is in that mirror at the beginning. Roubaud, the upright man, who treat everyone equally, mutates into a broken man Trying to save his job, resulted in the apparent adultery, the attempt to save the marriage, in the final murder.

Whether Sèverine is really so wicked as she stages Renoir remains open. There is evidence of their infidelity is not, you can also open confession by beating created doubt. The reputation as a femme fatale she is but just the latest after the murder of her godfather, when they tried to incite Lantier subtly into the murder of her husband ("Am Tomorrow is still alive and in the evening one is dead "). When this action does not have the heart to push Séverine blaming him for the now not able to come to their happiness in their shoes. "This happiness depended solely on you," they will judge and thus takes the position that Roubaud held before her.

your fatal character was probably the reason why La Bête humaine his time in the UK under the title Judas Was a Woman was sold [8] . Lantier seen in any case morally stronger than Séverine if you answered: "You can not build his fortune on a crime." But in the face of a possible refusal of the relationship, he says it ends up being willing to kill Roubaud. Why is he now, however, one of his "fits of sadness" suffers, where he eventually was able to here even have sex with Séverine, without showing even a hint of violence, is probably less than the test of authenticity, but due to the drama.

Renoir conjures up so "the implications of Zola's novel title is not" or possibly due [9] . In the course of the narrative the characters fall into decay to hit and role models [10] , but Renoir moved to their characterization in most cases only on the surface. While it is clear that Lantier attacks seem unpredictable and therefore not due to release a definitive, they suggest in addition to foreign debt, a self [11] . And as arbitrary as Lantier attacks also appear to love statements of the main characters, so their romance never seems credible and it therefore lacks the empathy of the audience.

The following classical tragedy, does the decline of all the pieces pre-determined. Thus, Séverine reluctant at first against Lantier decision to kill, but Roubaud ("Not tonight feel. I put that threatens me something"). Ultimately, they are victims of their bestial nature (in Zola's novel, this applies also on Roubaud and Flore), as Séverine godfather Grand Morin before, and if you will, the minor character Cabuche (Jean Renoir), which by past failures as a scapegoat for the Murder of Grand Morin is stylized. Freedom of its genetic disease - and indeed of himself - is Lantier in Renoir's film ultimately only in the "freedom of Death" granted [12] .

The inevitability of human nature, in Zola's novel of the same time period criticism of the then Justice System and obsession with progress needed [13] , Renoir is in the "dark pamphlet" to "entertaining movie spectacle" broken down [14] . Although the movie in France was an "instant hit", the Renoir finally brought recognition after which he had longed for 14 years " [15] does not seem it as if La Bête humaine for Director about the status of a commissioned work gone [16] . Only a half pages devoted Renoir over three decades later his work of poetic realism, he probably first and foremost out of friendship for Gabin assumed in his memoirs.

was perhaps the memory of the film to Renoir simply overshadowed by the fact that he had two months after theatrical release to its predecessor La grande illusion first foreign-language station was nominated for an Academy Award for best film. Ultimately impressed La Bête humaine through its visually stunning representation of the train (the opening scene is by the picture link) and the railroad life, and he also works largely as a precursor to the American film noirs of the 1940s [17] , on the narrative level fails La Bête humaine however, to provide an equally convincing characterization of his characters.

[1] See Bertin, Celia: Jean Renoir. A Life in Pictures, Baltimore / L ondon 1991, p. 150

[2] Renoir, Jean: My Life and My Films, Munich / Zurich 1974, p. 124

[3] Faulkner, Christopher / Duncan, Paul: Jean Renoir. A dialogue with his films, 1894-1979, Köln 2007, p. 95

[4] ibid

[5] See O'Shaughnessy, Martin: Jean Renoir (French Film Directors) Manchester and New York 2000, p. 141

ibid [6], p. 144

[7] Ibid, p. 143

[8] See Braudy, Leo: Jean Renoir. The world of his films, New York 1972, p. 249

[9] Hauck, John: On the magic carpet of imagination. , La Bête humaine ', in: streets, Heiner: Jean Renoir and the thirties: social utopia and aesthetic revolution, Munich 1995, p. 79-88, here p. 86

[10] ibid

[11] See Braudy, p. 58

ibid [12], p. 60

[13] See Hauck, p. 81

ibid [14], p. 84

[15] Bergan, Ronald: Jean Renoir. Projections of Paradise, Woodstock, New York 1994, p. 195

[16] Renoir said spontaneously over the phone and wrote the first draft of the screenplay based on his memories of the novel in two weeks, see Braudy, p. 208

[17] see Bergan, p. 194