Le sang des bêtes

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.

"Le Sang des Bêtes" is a splendid documentary about the life and work of many workers, living just outside the Paris walls after WWII. From the vast and deserted areas that seemed to completely surround the city and its few 'modern' outskirt-constructions, Franju suddenly leads us nearer to the heart of the capital. Where the industrial compounds rise. where, at the fringe of urban and rural worlds, the cattle is being slaughtered. From the horses slaughterhouses of the Porte de Vanves to the huge Halles de la Vilette, where cows, calves and sheep are being prepared to be eaten, this short film is by no means a claim for vegetarianism. Some scenes are certainly hard to watch, but the accurate eye of the director, his tenderness towards the men (and women) doing this very hard work, is the real point here. After all, we've seen animals die before (actually after, from 'Le Cochon' of Jean Eustache and Barbet Schroeder's New Guinea documentaries, to "Benny's Video" and the morbid attraction of Benny towards the film of the cow's death. So let not your prejudices take the better, and let the film deliver its message : that he is the witness of a world not that old, and already so odd to us.

Luis Buñuel was Georges Franju's favorite filmmaker. Now imagine the shocking eyeball- slicing scene of "Le Chien Andalou" (which, as you may well know, was a dead sheep's eyeball) taken to the goriest consequences: Franju takes his camera to a slaughterhouse in the outskirts of post-war Paris, and the appalling scene from Buñuel & Dali's classic feels like child's game compared to what is shown in this short documentary.

Here, we see -- in all horrifying details, truth and gore -- horses, cows, calves and sheep being matter-of-factly, bureaucratically slaughtered by dexterous butchers with axes, knives, hammers, and they don't even stop their smoking or casual whistling while doing their jobs. Among these indelible, nauseating scenes, we see an employee "caressing" a horse's head seconds before fatally puncturing its skull; the Berkeleyish "chorus line ballet" of decapitated sheep's paws; the still convulsive trunk of one decapitated, blood-drained, paw-less calf; and the gallons of steaming blood serving as an "illustration" of Charles Trenet's famous song "La Mer" ("The Sea"), heartily sung by one of the workers. In "Le Sang des Bêtes" you will see probably the most horrifyingly graphic scenes EVER filmed.

This film brings uncomfortable thoughts: on the one hand, how most of us -- consumers -- implicitly condone with this methodical, "impersonal" slaughtering of domestic, harmless creatures as long as we don't think very much about how meat, leather, soaps, etc "magically" appear at the supermarket or in a store. On the other hand, we wonder how butchers and other slaughterhouse workers manage to sublimate guilt, compassion and repulsion in a totally matter-of-fact, professional manner (they have to earn a living), proving how human beings can adapt to almost ANY circumstance (surely then-recent WW2 Nazi horror in concentration camps is very clear reference in "Le Sang...:").

"Le Sang..." features as an extra on the DVD that brings Franju's horror masterpiece "Les Yeux Sans Visage" (1959) and it's totally apropos: it's a perfectly macabre pas-de- deux. Impossible not to link the cold-hearted slaughter and skinning of the animals in "Le Sang..." with high-brow-gone-berserk surgeon Pierre Brasseur face-skinning his helpless victims with flawless craftsmanship in "Les Yeux". (Once again, the Nazi concentration camp "scientific" experiments are paralleled).

This is compulsory viewing for animal-rights activists and environmentalists. Don't even think of watching "Le Sang des Bêtes" if you're faint-hearted or after a meal; and beware you meat-eaters, this one may turn you in a vegetarian or at least make your next hamburger taste REALLY bad.

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.