The French have a knack for wallowing in dirt and being fascinating withal. The muddier the pool the keener their desire to throw stones into it and watch the ripples. The darkness of the human mind and the dirt of existence are what they love to dwell on; and they do so to their heart's content (and the horror of the audience) in "The Human Beast," current film at the Fine Arts.

The rumble of railroad trains and the feverish knock of a mad brain: this is the not exactly gleeful melody of "The Human Beast". Jean Gabin is the uncouth locomotive driver whose blood is polluted with the insane urge to kill those whom he loves; Simon Simon, his sweetheart and victim, is a mouse-like beauty whose coquetry instils the audience, too, with murderous desires. Jean Renoir's direction provides scenes of electrifying frankness and does more than full justice to the grim realism of Emile Zola, on whose novel of the same title "The Human Beast" is based. Two murders which are all but shown on the screen, one suicide, maddening jealousy and maddening love, puffing locomotives and sooty slums: this should give you your fill of "reality" for more than one night. But however gruesome and depressing, "The Human Beast" is only as exciting--and as disgusting--as the strange animal after which it is named and which it analyzes with such sadistic thoroughness.