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La Bête Humaine

La Bête Humaine

La Bête Humaine (English: The Human Beast and Judas Was a Woman) is a 1938 French film directed by Jean Renoir, with cinematography by Curt Courant. The picture features Jean Gabin and Simone Simon, and is loosely based on the 1890 novel La Bête humaine by Émile Zola.

Plot

The film opens with a quote from Zola's novel, one of his "Rougon-Macquart" series, emphasizing a character's fate as tied to the hereditary alcoholism that runs through his family's generations. The film itself, however, represents only a portion of the novel and veers from Zola's overriding theme of naturalistic fatalism.