Renoir's contribution to the dark tradition in French cinema (the original film noir) was an adaptation of Zola that, as André Bazin noted, avoided entirely the novel's particularly strained "cinematic vision" while offering its background of social conflict in the documentary-inspired visuals. Jean Gabin earned a place in the hearts of the French people with his portrayal of the working-class hero/victim, Lantier, a devoted engineer on the Paris-Le Havre line who is haunted by the threat of madness inherited from his alcoholic forbears. The station master's wife, Séverine (the feline Simone Simon), herself both femme fatale and victim-of her sex and her class-lures him into her desperate life. "Gabin, with the slightest tremor in his face, could express the most violent feelings," Jean Renoir wrote; his melancholy is nowhere better defined than in the split-second when he looks into a mirror to see the eyes, not so much of a murderer, perhaps, as of a suicide. "Masculinity is traditionally defined by action and power; in the Gabin persona it is characterized by immobility and failure" (G. Vincendeau, "The Beauty of the Beast," Sight and Sound).