Review of La Bête Humaine

Hereditary flaw... paying the price... suffering... committing acts beyond one's control... reasons locked deep inside. These Zolaist sentiments and characterizations ironically put the story of La Bete Humaine beyond the poetic realist genre. This film never rises to the surface of atmosphere. Image and sound are emotionally charged from the opening scene. Hi-key lighting and soft focus cinematography on closeups create psychological identification and promote the act of gazing. The camera is often stationary and actions moves past it. Closeups are often one-shots. Renoir utilizes a firmly constructed shot-reverse-shot system. There is deep depth of field in staging but not focus. The planes usually are staged with a mix of people and animals or object (horse, train) lending more power to the psychological identifications that run throughout the film. This form of layering creates elusive effects and provided a difficulty in access and privilege (a theme that perfectly describes the psychological paralysis of Jacques). "Feeling like a mad dog" and "haze fills my head" is rhetoric lending to concepts of mental illness sooner than excuses of hereditary responsibility. The mental illness transcends the social classes (like in Bas Fonds) as the wealthy husband commits heinous premeditated acts. "It was an accident for us" becomes the credo of the characters in the film and ties quite nicely to Renoir's own philosophy of the cork in the stream. Certain avant-garde techniques creep up (the rain bucket ellipsis). The only significant use of Renoir's famous stylistic system is at the end where great depth of field and mobile framing help construct a space similar to how it was accomplished at the end of M. Lange. The supersped up rear projection (or "side projection" in the end scene is the most dramatic visual in the film and in film more generally. The themes of immobility and isolation play perfectly when juxtaposed with the high-paced locomotion. Renoir comments "the locomotive was one of the most important characters" and unfortunately tips his hand about believing that his work does not venture into the realm of the psychological. La Bete Humaine should hopefully soon be considered Renoir's greatest film, but it first requires an understanding of the evolution and development of two stylistic systems of his. This will likely lead to his later work being more revered than it is today.