La Bête Humaine

To make this film Renoir obtained permission from the French railways to shoot on a ten-kilometre stretch of track, then built a mobile studio on it. The locomotive itself was the camera platform, with two cars behind it, one carrying the generator for the lighting and one serving as a makeup room. Nobody had done that before. Jean Gabin and Julien Carette learned the trade alongside railwaymen in Le Havre. They really are driving the locomotive in the film. The shoot was dangerous: with the train at full speed Renoir had to physically hold on to his cinematographer Curt Courant to stop the wind taking him, and a camera platform bolted to the side of the engine was ripped off at a tunnel mouth, with cameraman Claude Renoir narrowly escaping. Adapted from Zola, the story follows engine driver Jacques Lantier, who struggles with inherited fits of rage and becomes entangled in a murder and with a woman. Who it is for: viewers who want a noir where the machine feels more alive than the people and fate runs as straight as a rail. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fidelity to Zola. The novel is heavily compressed, the social panorama narrowed, and the weight shifted onto a trap built for three.