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.

There is a catharsis brought by art works that are painful to watch. In this case the catharsis does not come immediately. It takes time to sublimate the horrible experience, to get beyond it and to understand. To really understand.

A 20 minute documentary made in 1949 by Georges Franju (and scored by Joseph Kosma), calmly depicting the everyday work in the abattoirs from the outskirts of Paris. The animals coming here with serenity, suddenly killed and, that's it, immediately skin and legs and head are apart, it all happens incredibly fast. Sometimes bits of life go on for a few seconds. It's horrible. The slaughters make this matter-of-factly, otherwise you cannot resist there.

And as soon as you leave the slaughterhouse, it's normal life, that quiet poetry of normal life: sun, sometimes clouds, whisks of grass here and there, some debris, a pair of young lovers.

And actually it's about death, about our death: we are always dying innocently, and death is just part of life: death is just that, matter-of-fact.

An astonishing document.

A documentary shot with a surrealist aesthetic; images of unimaginable horror and violence--all perfectly real and unstaged--filmed with a languid and beautiful poetry. The images in this documentary about the slaughterhouse--the "abattoir," in the language of the narrator--are filmed with an almost cavalier, deadpan, unflinching clarity. The images of the lingering struggles of a decapitated calf; the satiny musculature exposed beneath the skin of a butchered cow, and the horrible but poetic moment when we see that the heart still beats beneath the sinews; the bored whistle of the beret-capped worker tapping the steaming spray of a horse's heart's blood; and then, the canal-concealing camera angle that shows us a barge bisecting a field of grass: "Blood of the Beasts" is a breathtaking celebration of the visual philosophy of surrealism.

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.

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