In La Bête humaine (1938), Jean Gabin played Jacques Lantier, a railway engine driver whose life is haunted by a violent inheritance and by his love for Séverine, played by Simone Simon. Directed by Jean Renoir, from Émile Zola’s novel, the film is one of the darkest works of poetic realism, and Gabin’s Jacques is its tragic, tender centre.
Jacques is a good man who fears what he may become, and Gabin plays him with a restraint that makes his fate all the more moving. The trains, the fog and the night work of the railway give the film its atmosphere, but it is Gabin’s face, watching and waiting, that stays with the audience. It is a performance of great humanity, in which a working man is given the stature of a classical hero.