Le Boucher (1970)
Le Boucher / The Butcher (1970)
A Film by Claude Chabrol
DVD5 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | 01:28:39 | 4,33 Gb
Audio: AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each track) - English, French, Spanish | Subtitles: English
Genre: Thriller | Nominated for BAFTA Film Award | France, Italy
A Film by Claude Chabrol
DVD5 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | 01:28:39 | 4,33 Gb
Audio: AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each track) - English, French, Spanish | Subtitles: English
Genre: Thriller | Nominated for BAFTA Film Award | France, Italy
Sexual frustration is the focus of this Hitchcockian thriller from French director Claude Chabrol. Schoolteacher Hélène (Stéphane Audran) comes to a small Périgord village to begin a new job. She is soon romanced by the local butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne), but is distracted by her job and memories of a previous ill-fated relationship. A series of brutal murders of young women and a dropped cigarette-lighter raise Hélène's suspicions about her suitor, whose pitiable, depraved compulsions lead to a gruesome conclusion. Audran, who was Chabrol's wife at the time, makes an engaging heroine, and Yanne is simultaneously scary and pathetic as the obsessive butcher.
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Helene has been the headmistress at the local school for three years. At the wedding of a colleague she enjoys talking to the town butcher, Paul, and a friendship begins. At the same time, the police find a young woman stabbed to death and the town becomes intrigued with the murder. As Helene starts to fall for Paul she finds a second body, that of the bride from the wedding, with a lighter near the body like one she got Paul. When Paul produces his lighter her fears subside, but when he discovers the one she has found their world turns upside down.
Le Boucher (1970)
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Le Boucher is one of two films that Alfred Hitchcock stated that he wished he had made, a fact that must have given Chabrol a great deal of pleasure given his love of the master. Like many of Chabrol’s films the plot is simply a device to look at the life of the bourgeois and how the characters who inhabit this world act in keeping with their societal mores. Le Boucher is deceptively slight and could be dismissed as a mere character study but this disregards the care Chabrol takes in creating the world of his characters. Chabrol also writes this piece.
Le Boucher (1970)
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Le Boucher takes place in a small provincial town with it’s gossips, local bakers and sense of community. Le Boucher begins with a very happy and joyful wedding and the witty talk of Helene and Paul. As they start a hesitant romance, Paul gives Helene cuts of meat and she makes him a present of a lighter. Helene explains she has not been in a relationship for 10 years and Paul explains how being in the army has scarred him for life. The simple domesticity of their courting is very affecting but throughout Chabrol ensures that Paul says enough to hint at greater unhappiness. This romance is made edgier by a very tense score from Pierre Jansen much in the style of Morricone’s work on Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Chabrol’s unerring knack of making the familiar seem foreboding and the friendly seam deadly is exceptional here. When Helene leads her class through caves telling them stories they are led out to have a picnic and whilst one child reaches for a croissant another sees blood drop on their food – the second victim is revealed bleeding above.
Le Boucher (1970)
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Crucial in the tension of the film is the relationship between Helene and Paul. Stephane Audran is fine and quite still as the unlucky in love schoolteacher but Jean Yanne is exceptional as the gregarious but dark Paul. He manages to convince that he is both homicidal and gentle and his disclosure to Helene that being with her was the only way to stop his urge to kill is both pathetic and moving. Paul’s ending at his own hand comes because of how “embarassed” he is by being found out, he takes his own life rather than kill Helene because of his shame. As he bleeds to death he keeps a running commentary on his blood loss and Helene is moved to kiss him as he dies in the hospital. It is notable that rather than tell the police about finding his lighter by the body she chooses not to and would rather live with her fear and the secret. Despit this, the two would be lovers only embrace when Paul is bleeding to death. The final image of Le Boucher is Helene watching her town from across the water, we are unsure whether she will disclose Paul’s acts and whether she is considering her close shave or a life without love.
Le Boucher (1970)
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Le Boucher is nigh perfect. It works by making the viewer want true love and happiness for the leads and then exposing the sheer impossibility of that. Like Les Bonnes Femmes, Le Boucher is a cautionary tale of the risks of looking for love. With great central performances and a terrific sense of the world of it’s story, Le Boucher is a classic thriller.John White, 10Kbullets
Le Boucher (1970)
The opening title illustrations of this film, depicting animals painted in Cro-Magnon caves, remind us of those in Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry. Both give a lightning and anticipatory summary of the story, but The Butcher is not a black comedy. The pastoral landscape will not be stained by a hideous character that some representative inhabitants of the village believed, without remorse, they have killed. Here, the victims are innocent people whose murderer’s identity everyone, or nearly everyone, is anxious to discover.
Le Boucher (1970)
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We are impelled to be less interested in the whodunit angle than in the motive for why the murders were done, a question that may elicit more than one answer. The plot developments intensify the ambiguity of the characters and their actions, instead of clarifying them. Chabrol converts simple things into symbols with an indefinite meaning. The mutual exchange of presents between the butcher and the headmistress (the leg of a lamb and the lighter) are like ritual offerings for a sacrifice, not a sign of courtesy or love. Also, certain attitudes of the apparently peaceful villagers are not free from mystery and contradiction. There is no explanation for the meeting between the butcher and the teacher’s wife, who will end up being killed, in the surroundings of the caves. The baker asks with dislike how long the police will be around investigating the case. In the butcher’s shop, a collector of costumes comes to say: war is a horrible thing, but a murder like this is barbaric.
Le Boucher (1970)
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Gradually, the spectator perceives that the serial crimes are offerings to Hélène, like the first fruits that, in past times, were offered up to a deity. Hélène feels flattered and says: "What a dream. A dream, to have a butcher select your meat", and at the same time she is afraid to fall in love again. At the excursion to the caves, the children ask about their prehistoric inhabitant and how he might survive in a modern world. It then appears to us that the man who returns from military service in Algeria and Indochina seems to be no less primitive. The film is rich in double meanings. Any casual piece of dialogue can be interpreted in multiple ways. The camera and the music work like sentinels who know the immediate dangers. The audience is kept in suspense up to the last shot. The film is cleverly interpreted by Stéphane Audran and Jean Yanne. One of Chabrol’s best.Adam Gai, Films de France
Le Boucher (1970)
Edition Details:
- Commentary
- Photo Gallery
- Non-anamorphic Trailer
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