Le Boucher (1970)

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

Director:

Claude Chabrol

Writer:

Claude Chabrol (by)

Stars:

Stéphane Audran, Jean Yanne, Antonio Passalia

Nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 2 wins.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Stéphane Audran	...	Hélène
Jean Yanne	...	Popaul / Paul Thomas
Antonio Passalia	...	Angelo
Pascal Ferone	...	Père Cahrpy / Uncle Cahrpy
Mario Beccara	...	Léon Hamel
William Guérault	...	Charles
Roger Rudel	...	Commissaire Grumbach / Inspector Grumbach

Storyline

Butcher Popaul meets schoolteacher Helene at a wedding in a small rural French village. They become friends. But girls are murdered in the area and Helene finds at the scene the lighter she gave Popaul...

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Plot Keywords:

indochina war veteran | butcher | serial killer | knife murder | child murder | 

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

GP

Details

Country:

France Italy

Language:

French

Release Date:

19 December 1971 (USA)

Also Known As:

Le Boucher

Filming Locations:

La Roche-Guyon, Val-d'Oise, France

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films de la Boétie,Euro International Film (EIA)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Claude Chabrol was famous for his drunken antics on movie sets. Stéphane Audran remembers that, one day during the shooting of Le Boucher (1970), he drank so much wine that he had to be brought away with a cart.

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Goofs

When the blood from a murder victim drips down onto a girl from a cliff above, the hand shown dripping the blood looks fake.

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Quotes

Hélène: [Walking through a cavern] You must understand that the instincts, the feelings, and even the intelligence of Cro-Magnon man was definitely human. The only differences to the problem were his needs to survive.
Student: What does "survive" mean?
Hélène: It means to stay alive. He began to draw. Do you know what we call desires when they lose their savage quality? Aspirations. If Cro-Magnon had not survived, the world in which we live wouldn't exist.

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Connections

Referenced in Butterfly (1975)

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Soundtracks

Plaisir D'Amour
Music by Johann Martini (uncredited)

User Reviews

Gallic Hitchcock?

Hitchcock comparisons abound with Chabrol. However, you may be hard pressed to see anything other than a superficial similarity between them here.

Although nicely acted and crafted, 'Le Boucher' has a curious sense of disengagement that will either fascinate or frustrate viewers. While not necessarily a bad thing in itself, this can also give the impression of a lack of depth. It's hard to fully discern what the character motivations are so, depending on your proclivity, you are likely to become either enthralled or disinterested in what they might actually be.

Viewers familiar with Francois Truffaut will notice some similarities in approach but Chabrol lacks the concise poetry of that other French great. Even though the opening wedding sequence nicely sets up a scene of normality for the events that follow, it's rather overlong and a more Hitchcockian terseness would certainly have helped.

Still, the film does have a strange charm and there are some excellent character ideas regarding the schoolteacher (content with her celibacy long after a bad relationship) being seduced? threatened? by the promise of new love from the local butcher - who may or may not be a murderer. These threads are either unexplored or deliberately withheld, depending on your point of view.

A worthwhile watch for those interested but, possibly, not quite the masterpiece some might lead you to believe it is.