If two works of classic, nineteenth-century literature laid the narrative and thematic foundation for film noir, those would be Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Émile Zola’s La Bête humaine. Over the past century, the former has seen literally dozens of film adaptations, some faithfully, others loosely, while Zola’s masterpiece has received just three, but they are all very good and they are all part of this collection. Earlier adapted by the Frenchman Jean Renoir (La Bête humaine, 1938) and then the American Fritz Lang (Human Desire, 1954), Argentine director Daniel Tinayre took his turn in 1957 with La bestia humana (US: The Human Beast). It’s darker, grittier and more violent than the others, and Tinayre, his reputation by this time established for gorgeous B&W stylistics, paints with a dreary, nihilistic brush as Zola’s characters, none of them good, connive their way through this vicious mortal coil. Appropriately opening with a funeral procession snaking its way through a thunderstorm, the film stars Massimo Girotti as Pedro with the killer instinct, Ana María Lynch as his manipulative lover Flora, and Eduardo Cuitiño as her violently jealous husband. Slister’s woodwinds-heavy score is chilling in parts, and Etchebehere’s camera finds deep shadows in every corner, alley, and rail yard; note Pedro’s moonlit escape across angular rooftops and through glistening tire yards after fleeing through a window. As Zola would have it, though, the dominant presence are the trains that connect the characters, their passing roar muffling the smacks and screams as Flora’s beaten to a pulp by her husband, their billows of black smoke like evil unleashed.