The Human Beast

…war; La Bête humaine (1938; The Human Beast, or Judas Was a Woman), an admirable free interpretation of Zola; and especially La Règle du jeu (1939; The Rules of the Game), his masterpiece. Cut and fragmented by the distributors, this classic film was also regarded as a failure until it…

…Renoir’s La Bête humaine (1938; The Human Beast), for example, were shot on a moving engine, except the final scene, in which the hero, played by Jean Gabin, leaps to his death. Another French director of the same era, Marcel Pagnol, had his cast and crew construct the farmhouse for…

…suited for adaptation; the pioneering version of La Bête humaine by Jean Renoir in 1938 and a big-budget rendition of Germinal by Claude Berri in 1993 are two examples. Above all, Zola’s writings endure on account of his forthright portrayal of social injustice, his staunch defense of the downtrodden, and…