The butcher

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Movie
German title The butcher
Original title Le boucher
Country of production France , Italy
original language French
Publishing year 1970
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Claude Chabrol
script Claude Chabrol
production André Génovès
music Pierre Jansen
camera Jean Rabier
cut Jacques Gaillard
occupation
A rocky plateau above the Dordogne river - where the second body was found

The butcher (original title: Le boucher) is a French - Italian crime film by Claude Chabrol from 1970.

action

Hélène Daville works as headmistress in a village in Périgord and lives in an apartment in the school building. Always perfectly dressed and coiffed, she has complete control over her emotions. On the one hand, she follows the social expectation of unmarried teachers, but also refuses to show her feelings because she has been through a serious disappointment. The uneducated, often vulgar, then again amiable butcher Paul Thomas, who is called "Popaul" by everyone locally, has been secretly and obsessively in love with her for months. At the wedding party of a fellow teacher they sit next to each other as guests and get to know each other better.

Popaul was brought up in an authoritarian manner, that is, with beating. He served as a butcher in a supply unit of the French army for 15 years, including in the Algerian War and the Indochina War . Several times he tells of traumatic experiences, of the sight of chopped off and stacked human heads and the battered bodies of massacred young and old Vietnamese women.

For weeks Popaul tries to win the teacher's heart. Hélène allows a certain closeness and invites him to eat, but keeps Popaul at a distance when he tries to get closer. However, she wants to keep the friendship and so she gives the butcher Popaul a lighter for his birthday.

When a stabbed girl is found not far from the village, the gendarmerie from the next larger town is called in, but cannot identify the perpetrator. After a class in a cave with Paleolithic paintings, Hélène and her class find the horrific corpse of a woman. This turns out to be the wife of Hélène's colleague, at whose wedding she met Popaul. The traces at the crime scene suggest that the murder must have happened immediately before. Next to the dead woman is a lighter that looks exactly like the one Hélène Popaul gave for her birthday. Hélène has a terrible suspicion. She takes the lighter with her and hides it at home.

Later that evening, when she is alone in her apartment, Popaul comes to visit surprisingly with a glass of cognac cherries that he supposedly bought the same day in Périgueux . While they eat the cherries, Hélène remains reserved, which Popaul does not miss. When the conversation turns to the murdered woman, he shows himself caring for Hélène's terrible experience, whereupon Hélène begins to cry. Popaul reacts understandingly without asking further. After Hélène has recovered, she puts a cigarette in her mouth and asks Popaul for a light. He takes out a lighter that appears to be Hélène's birthday present. Hélène again loses control of her emotions and weeps in joyful relief that she has obviously wrongly suspected Popaul, but withholds the cause of her tears from him. That evening Popaul Hélène offers to carry out the urgently outstanding painting work in her apartment. Meanwhile, it is reported that a third murder with the same characteristics occurred in Périgueux.

While painting in Hélène's apartment, Popaul accidentally discovers the crime scene lighter in a drawer and puts it in his pocket. Hélène later notices the loss and learns from a student who was busy with additional schoolwork in her apartment that only Popaul could have taken the lighter with him. When Popaul returns to school late in the evening and Hélène urgently wants to speak, she panics. She locks all the doors of the school building. Popaul still manages to get into the building. He confesses to the murders and shows her his murder weapon, a long knife. The idea that Hélène must be disgusted by him because of his actions is unbearable for him. After his confession, Popaul rammed the knife in his stomach to "kill himself", whereupon Hélène drives him to the hospital. On this trip, Popaul reveals his feelings for her. Arriving at the hospital, Popaul, lying on the stretcher, makes his last request to Hélène to kiss him, who she complies. Hélène watches Popaul in the elevator until the doors close. Shortly afterwards, a paramedic informs her that Popaul died in the elevator with her name on his lips. Hélène leaves the hospital and drives her car to a river. She gets out, leaves the headlights on and sits motionless on the bank until dawn.

Imagery

“Chabrol blocked out any noise, the only thing the audience hears is the disturbing music by Pierre Jansen before the passenger's monologue begins. Slowly, quietly, almost completely powerless. The camera perspective changes from the direction of view to the road, to the dark sky, to the driver's face and finally to the injured person - over several minutes this constant change creates an almost unbearable atmosphere. "

Reviews

The lexicon of international films was of the opinion that Chabrol was using "the criminal case as a harrowing parable about the power of evil and the fragility of human order". Due to the perfect balance of form and content, the film becomes “a highlight of French post-war film”. Prisma described the film as "an excellently executed psychological thriller [...] that [...] plays with psychological elements and explains a lot about the power of evil". For TV Spielfilm it was one of Chabrol's "most successful works". It is a "portrait of a mentally deformed person who is never defamed as a beast".

Most of the critics set different accents: Chabrol set accents “casually” - for example in “salon chatter” - in order to “make a lot more understandable for the audience. [...] In this film, which even the arch-conservative 'Figaro' considered the 'best since the Liberation' (1945), Chabrol combines a documentary image of the Dordogne (Chabrol: 'The only French department in which the people are happy ') with precisely programmed social criticism: [...] Chabrol explains the crimes with the authoritarian upbringing and the long war experiences of the perpetrator (' comrades of mine are just rotten in the sun '), he contrasts them with stories from uncultivated Cromagnon people and characterizes the rector with interspersed Balzac quotes ('When she saw the Marquis ... one had the impression of greatness with which even the rawest soul must be impressed'). Such cunning cinema works, also clad in extremely aesthetic pictures, have recently brought the hostility of his old ' Cahiers du cinéma ' to Chabrol and once and for all deterred German film distributors despite clear Parisian box office successes. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Butcher . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2006 (PDF; test number: 107 564 DVD).
  2. ↑ www.film-rezensions.de , accessed September 29, 2018.
  3. ↑ The butcher. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ See prisma.de
  5. ↑ See tvspielfilm.de
  6. ↑ [1] Der Spiegel, November 30, 1970.