At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

The title of this French film was easy to translate, I did not know anything about the plot or anything, but I was going to watch it because it featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, directed by Claude Chabrol (Ophélia, Story of Women). Basically in the small rural French village of Tremolat, Périgord, confident and slightly naive young school teacher Hélène (Stéphane Audran, Chabrol's then wife) is lonely, one day she meets war veteran and local butcher Paul Thomas, or "Popaul" (Jean Yanne) at the wedding party of her colleague Léon Hamel (Mario Beccara). Hélène is happy to be friends and have a platonic relationship with Popaul, but she is still recovering from the disillusionment of her last relationship, at his birthday as a gift she gives him a lighter. On a school class excursion to a cave in the woods, Hélène finds the body of a murdered woman, victim to a serial killer, she realises it is Leon's wife, she also finds Popaul's lighter at the crime scene, but takes it and hides the evidence from the police. Hélène is relieved to see Popaul visiting her still has his own lighter, but her suspicions of him crop up again when he is painting her house ceiling, and another discovery affects her sense of security, however they begin to pursue a more close relationship. Hélène enjoys the company of Popaul, and it seems she would do anything for him as their relationship deepens, but she cannot ignore the fact that there are unexplained murders of women occurring in the village. Also starring Antonio Passalia as Angelo, Pascal Ferone as Uncle Cahrpy, Roger Rudel as Police Inspector Grumbach and William Guérault as Charles. The relationship between the teacher and the suspicious man who may be a sex murderer is interesting to see play out, with two great leading stars, you are unsure as much as she is whether he can be trusted, there is not a lot of bloody violence, it is simply an examination of how suspicion can change things in a relationship, like a Hitchcock film would, and also a study of sexual frustration, a great thriller style psychological drama. Good!

Claude Chabrol's film, The Butcher, is a brooding, menacing character study held together by two central characters occupying the space of a small, French town and getting along overly well with one another. Each of them share respective back-stories which flit between being emotionally tragic and gut-wrenchingly unfortunate; stories most certainly enough to visibly shake either member of this pairing and, you'd hope, enough to affect even that of an outsider to these two people hearing of times gone by in each of these respective people's lives. One of the two people, Jean Yanne's character named Popaul, is the town's local butcher; a man whom has fought on the front-line of war and has consequently witnessed bloody warfare. He finds solace, now, in chopping up meat and serving it to the locals whereas prim primary school teacher Hélène (Audran) has settled down as a live-in headmistress at a respected school raising and teaching the young pupils whom frequent; this, after still coming to terms with a relationship with a man which, in her eyes, should have resulted in a consequent marriage and the bringing up of children.The film is about the duality the pair of them share in this sense, their ways of finding personal parity with what it is that's happened to them in their lives in the form of respective tragedies, and how their ideas of respective 'treatment' concurrently are actually lifestyles more eerily linked to that of the ingredients of what it was that upset them in the first place. It is a darkly brilliant piece, an intimate character study about two people moving closer to the items that have effectively made them the near-enough to a psychological wreck that they are; Hélène's process of keeping a happy face and effectively nurturing young children with their education and during field days the emotional proving to oneself that she can, in fact, play the mothering role. For Popaul, his demons more broadly linked to that of a the bloody war-field upon which he served time sees him draw upon a grotesque fascination with blood; an obsession which does not allow him to keep away from the sight he hates most and consequently sees him mutate into a serial killer.No doubt lending great inspiration to the later works of about ten years or so in Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, itself a film about an innocent woman coming to bond with a serial killing male, Chabrol's piece fits nicely into that cinematic canon of around about the time when serial killers were permitted to be among us, have lives as well as jobs and were most importantly, constructed as human beings whom carried with them flaws that made them who they were rather than being rendered faceless, mindless monsters. The American study of similar subsistence begins with Hitchcock's Psycho and flows all the way through to The Boston Strangler as the best of the time exploring said ideas.The film is, of course, about this serial killer but it is not so much preoccupied with whom it is that's carrying out the killings told from the perspective of police officers as much as it is how somebody completely unbeknownst to such techniques of detecting comes to innocently bond with such a beast. It is hardly revealing that Yanne plays such a character, such a fact is core to the film's experience. The film begins with a series of cave paintings, odd works of art occupying a dark and dingy dwelling as compositions of objects periodically arrive on our screens in a fashion which makes it near impossible to make out; that sense of a distorted psychosis or of an unbalanced psyche furthermore causing an unwavered or unfocused perspective prominent. What then happens is a cut to an establishing shot of a quaint French town, somewhere cut off from most places and seemingly basking in the glory of anonymity and processes of eventlessness; but there is trouble within. Within the town, a wedding plays out; a young couple getting married with joy and happiness appearing plentiful; the wedding eventually giving way not to the story of the bride or groom and their tribulations but to the two eventual leads sharing a walk away from such items as marriage, companionship, exuberance, triumph and whatnot.Amidst the beauty lies ugliness; a young woman has already been found murdered nearby shocking everyone within the radius, the establishing of the killer's apparent lust for the death of people of the victim's age and gender not boding well when we realise the film will come to stick with young Hélène. Chabrol makes us symptomatically aware of both Hélène's vulnerability and Popaul's apparent untrustworthiness by lingering on Hélène as she walks away down a street from a perspective which is difficult to label as Popaul's, but is no-less a composition which additionally lingers by his side, inferring that it is his gaze. What follows is a quite brilliant exploration of these two coming to form a tie with one another, a platonic attraction seeing Popaul once again become infatuated with something he is supposed to feel such disdain toward, the results of which are violent outbursts, while Hélène herself cannot quite come to break down demons linked to that of refraining to engage in relations following her past tragedy. It is an unnerving but brutally effective piece, a studying of a serial killer at large whom of course we want caught, but seemingly not if it means our protagonist, whom we've come to care for dearly, must suffer further set-backs to that of the one she did before. The film is swift and decisive, an agonising character study cutting through what it is that makes its two leads tick and doing so with ruthless efficiency.

A young accomplished headmistress of a Parisian village, Miss Helen(Stéphane Audran), is in a conundrum..she's in love with a serial killer, Paul(Jean Yanne), the local butcher, who has been stabbing young females in the surrounding area with a knife, leaving bloody corpses. Stumped Police Inspector Grumbach(Roger Rudel)questions Helen after a second murder of a local girl married to a teacher she knows, Leon(Mario Beccara),bleeds upon the head of a student after a field trip into a cavern looking at prehistoric paintings. Helen confiscates a key piece of evidence linking Paul to the crime..a cigarette lighter she gave him for his birthday. What started as a blossoming romance between two people soon darkens as Helen must fear that Paul's homicidal tendencies could endanger her own well being.My first Claude Chabrol thriller was a nice surprise. It's really more of a character study, a kind of "opposites attract" romance develops regarding how two completely different people find a mutual growing friendship and love for one another despite their glaring differences. Audran is a revelation, completely believable, as this elegant, refined, sophisticated lady who is absolutely realistic as the headmistress. Yanne looks like your typical working-class butcher, walking with a slouch, often discussing the horrors of war, but very mannered, guarded as to not say too much, yet appealing in a quiet way. I like how they find this pleasant rapport with each other.I think the decision to shoot in such a minimalist manner, from the performances to the style, enhances the film..like a good Hitchcock thriller, Chabrol is even able to create a type of McGuffen regarding the first murder as we follow Helen and Paul's bonding, the way they meet each other(..stopping by each other's place of employment as they work), spending time together, disregarding the village uproar about the vicious slaying, acknowledging it in a subdued way. I think that's perhaps the most interesting aspect of the thriller..the way neither Helen or Paul dwell on the murder until they have no other choice. For a while the only way you could tell it was a potential thriller was the very moody, rather chilling score. I think another aspect which worked for me was the idea that a killer was close by and that Helen was the main focus of the film..Chabrol never leaves her, and the threat towards her life was quite vivid. I appreciate Chabrol's unpretentious direction..he doesn't call attention to himself, allowing the characters and story to grip you instead.