Le Sang des bêtes | Blood Of The Beasts [graphic violence]

Georges Franju | 1949
English subtitles (captioning)


An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses. Describes the fate of the animals and that of the workers in graphic detail.

Despite the grim content, this description of three abattoirs (horses, cattle, sheep) is no vegetarian tract. What most fascinates Franju is the inflicting of violent death as a matter of banal 9-to-5 routine. We soon pick up the process: the pickaxe through the skull, the throat-cutting, the steaming blood (it's winter) spilling across the stone floor, the hacking and dismembering. We become accustomed to the echoing sounds: the banging and clattering, someone off-camera singing 'La Mer'. The slaughterhouses are placed in geographical context, with Kosma's lilting waltz theme accompanying an evocation of the outskirts of post-war Paris: canals, junk markets, scrubby wasteland. It's a gift of a subject for a surrealist like Franju: an everyday nightmare, at once atrocious and outlandishly beautiful.

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Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• short
• avant-garde
• experimental
• subtitle
• (captioning)