Le sang des bêtes

"Blood of the Beasts" by Georges Franju is among the most horrifying documentaries I have ever seen.Its unflinching depiction of animal butchery will certainly upset many potential viewers.The film is set in a Parisian slaughterhouse.We see various butchers slaughtering horses,cows,calves and sheep.This film is very graphic without being exploitative,though-Franju simply documents the activities in a slaughterhouse circa 1949.It's very well done-the images are strong,often disturbing-and the camera acts almost as a neutral observer,seeing all.This is a good film,but I only recommend it with a strong warning about its content.So if you are squeamish don't watch this short.8 out of 10.

Franju's short 1949 documentary of a Paris slaughterhouse is riveting, disturbing and beautifully filmed in black-and-white.

Though the subject matter and their ultimate demise is an eye opener, the manner in which men and women butcher the beasts is the most distressing. The butcher slaughter as calmly and methodically as anyone else doing a day's work. This coincides with Franju's belief that true, genuine horror is found in every day life - not in mad scientists, creepy monsters or wild story lines far removed from reality.

Regardless, the cinematography is outstanding, capturing a moment in time few get to witness.

If you're curious as to how animals were slaughtered fifty years ago, or if you have a taste for the macabre, this is the thought-provoking short for you.

The Criterion DVD "Les Yeux sans visage" aka Eyes without a Face" also includes the 20 minutes long documentary by Georges Franju, "The Blood of the Beasts" (1949) about an ordinary day at the slaughterhouse in Paris. This short film is one of the most horrifying ever made. What makes it even more difficult to see – the matter-of-fact efficient way the professional and skilled butchers do their jobs never stop smoking or whistling…. In one of the comments, the author recalls the famous eyeball- slicing scene of "Le Chien Andalou" which was a dead cow's eyeball. That shot only last a second, and it is still shocking. Now imagine much more gruesome and unbearable scenes showing the killing of horses, cows, calves and sheep over and over and over again and that unspeakable terror and fear in their eyes...Paris (or London, or New York City or Rome or any other place in the world) needs their steaks, chops, and burgers

A film of great and terrible beauty.

This short 1949 film by Georges Franju - about 20 minutes or so in length is narrated by Georges Hubert and Nicole Ladmiral and was the winner of the 1950 Grand Prix International du Court Sujet.

Filmed in black and white - I doubt it could be watched by many in colour - this film weaves an effective documentary of Paris's various abattoirs out of startling yet non-contrived surrealist images. The scenes of death are presented coldly, without sentimentality but also, in my view, without lessening the suffering of the animals - an indeed the men.

George Franju had one of the strangest careers in the French cinema.His shorts were revolutionary.When he began full-length features ,as contemporary of the Nouvelle Vague,he was drastically different.All his best works ("la tête contre les murs" "les Yeux sans Visage" "Thomas L'Imposteur" even his minor films such as "Pleins Feux sur l'Assassin" and his remake of Feuillade's "Judex) have a sense of mystery you would never find in his peers' works (with the exception of some of Chabrol's ones).

"Le sang des bêtes" has not lost its strength even in 2006.It still stands as one of the best shorts ever done.It depicts horror: inside a slaughterhouse ,where the beasts suffer and man himself risks his life ,there's a world nobody had entered before Franju 's camera let us in.The pictures are sometimes so harrowing,so unbearable,you find yourself looking away.There's this sublime picture of a horse ,bowing before being shot.

The commentary is brilliant,and the two actors who say it are to be commended.

Georges Hubert uses a neuter voice,even when he describes the most terrifying of the scenes: should he depict the riverboat for sightseeing,he would not use a different tone.He makes me think of the commentary in Luis Bunuel's " Hurdes" Nicole Ladmiral,on the other hand has a warm voice ,sometimes verging on tenderness as she describes the urban lugubrious landscapes outside the slaughterhouse.Life goes one ,people fall in love,around the buildings with its sinister "steeple" which is not that of a church . Nowadays Nicole Ladmiral is forgotten:her career was short-lived and very sad.After an important part in "Journal d'un curé de Campagne ",Robert Bresson's classic, she could never find another role worthy of her talent (except for some uninteresting supporting parts on stage)and she threw herself under a train in a metro station.