The Butcher (1971)

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This film is a work of such blatant charlatanry that it calls into question the meaning of the word 'auteur' as it is applied to the French new wave directors. Such is the awe with which Chabrol was and continues to be regarded (including by Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby) that he apparently felt he could get away with anything. Le Boucher is a film so utterly devoid of dramatic interest that it would be charitable to regard it as a failed experiment that attempted to push the limits of cinematic exposition to an extremity of emptiness. I might forgive Chabrol for writing and producing it if his intention was to demonstrate the boring predictability of bourgeois culture in a place like Perigord, but I'd prefer to spend an hour and a half doing my laundry.

Given the overcooked nature of most modern thrillers, it's a pleasure to see what the late Claude Charbol could conjure out of a few simple elements. A sexy but abstemious young head teacher strikes up a friendship with a local butcher in a small French town; the first half of this movie is simply a character study, then someone dies and the story moves into darker territory, although steering clear of the mainstream ending. Although the soundtrack is dated, the way Charbol uses it is highly intelligent, subtly conveying a mood of menace; but ultimately this is a psychological study of a character less in control of her own life than she has liked to think. Perhaps the set-up is not completely convincing; but this is an intelligent movie, and one that rewards the viewer responding to it with an intelligence of their own.

The film is a thriller, but a superlative example of the genre. Murders in a small French town are traced to an inoffensive-seeming young butcher (Jean Yanne) who is courting the local schoolmistress (Stephane Audran).The Butcher is a curious, mainly charming film which can't make up its mind whether to be an eccentric character study or a Hitchcockian thriller, but works on both levels. Director Claude Chabrol again does what he likes best: peering behind the bland, polite surface of the French bourgeoisie and finding ugliness and twisted desires. The Butcher is one of two films that Alfred Hitchcock stated that he wished he had made.

"Le Boucher" is one of Claude Chabrol's most heavily (over)praised films, but I suspect that this has more to do with the fact that it was made during the most celebrated period of his career (1968-1973), rather than with the strengths of the film itself. Trouble starts early on, with an opening after-the-wedding-celebration sequence that goes on for SO long, it almost seems as if Chabrol is challenging the viewer not to give up right there. But as the film goes on, you realize that Chabrol has so little story (which he wrote) to tell, that he stretches nearly EVERY scene too long: a funeral, kids entering the classroom, the heroine walking from place A to place B, etc. There is absolutely no mystery - the second you learn about the first murder, you immediately know who is responsible. And although there are essentially only 2 characters in the film, they are not really very well-developed: the killer is given no motivation beyond his 15-year war experiences that apparently desensitized him to blood and killing, and the heroine's behavior makes little to no sense - Charbrol's characters often cover up crimes of their loved ones, but the schoolteacher in this film (who is wonderful with the kids, by the way) shows no more than a passing interest in the butcher, and certainly no indication that she cares about him so much that she would abandon her human values and let brutal crime go unpunished. Even with an unflattering hairstyle, Stephane Audran is fascinating to watch - Jean Yanne less so; Michel Bouquet is a better leading man in "La Femme Infidele". In fact, "La Femme Infidele", which I saw just a few days ago, is a far superior Chabrol film on all levels; watch that one twice before you start with "Le Boucher". ** out of 4.