1941-1950 Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive Art Documentary France Georges Franju Short Film

Georges Franju – Le sang des bêtes AKA Blood of the Beasts (1949)

adminJuly 9, 2021

1 2,004

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.
Xavier Martin on IMDB

Despite the grim content, this description of three abbatoirs (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 throatcutting, 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.
BBa on Time Out Film Guide