Film Review: Le Boucher (The Butcher, 1970)

Claude Chabrol’s Le Boucher (1970), a psychological thriller set in a small French town, is a curious paradox in the history of cinema. While it contains moments of extraordinary brilliance, like the discovery of a corpse during a school trip, the work as a whole struggles to justify its status as a canonical masterpiece. Yet these isolated triumphs exist within a narrative that often feels disjointed, overly reliant on melodrama, and curiously restrained in its thematic ambition. Le Boucher is a film that dazzles in fragments but falters as a cohesive whole, leaving audiences to wonder if its reputation stems more from Chabrol’s stature than its own merits.

The film’s reception history itself reflects the cultural biases of its era. Released during a period when European art cinema, particularly the French New Wave, held near-untouchable prestige in critical circles, Le Boucher was marketed to English-speaking audiences under its French title, Le Boucher, rather than its literal translation, The Butcher. This decision, likely an attempt to align the film with the perceived sophistication of continental cinema, obscured its accessibility. The title’s exoticism, however, does little to mask the work’s uneven pacing or its reluctance to fully commit to either psychological complexity or genre thrills.

Set in the small town of Tremolat—a real location in southwestern France whose residents populate the background—the story unfolds with deliberate slowness. Hélène Davile, a sharp-witted school headmistress played by Chabrol’s then-wife Stéphane Audran, attends the wedding of her colleague Léon Hamel (Mario Beccaria), where she meets the Paul “Popaul” Thomas, the town’s new butcher (Jean Yanne). Their relationship begins innocuously: Paul supplies the school with meat and assists with repairs, while Hélène remains emotionally guarded, citing a decade-old heartbreak as her reason for remaining single. Paul, meanwhile, carries his own secrets: a veteran of France’s wars in Indochina and Algeria, he returned to civilian life only recently, inheriting his estranged father’s butcher shop. The tranquillity of Tremolat is shattered, however, by a series of brutal murders targeting women. When Hélène discovers a victim’s body during a school outing, the clues points suspiciously toward Paul, forcing her to confront both her growing attraction to him and the possibility that he might be a monster.

Chabrol’s film has long been compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Suspicion (1941), where the audience’s uncertainty about a character’s guilt drives suspense, and Psycho (1960), whose blonde protagonist and small-town dread are echoed in Hélène’s plight. The school trip sequence, with its sudden plunge into horror, even recalls The Birds (1963) in its shift from domestic normality to visceral chaos. Yet Chabrol diverges from Hitchcock’s stylistic flamboyance, opting instead for a stripped-back, almost documentary-like aesthetic. The opening wedding scene, filmed with a cinéma vérité sensibility, captures the villagers’ interactions with unforced realism, prioritising atmosphere over artifice. This austerity pays off in the film’s most memorable scenes, particularly when Hélène stumbles upon the corpse. Here, Chabrol’s direction—pacing the camera’s movements, Audran’s agonised close-ups, and the eerie silence—creates a visceral tension that lingers long after the screen fades.

The film’s strengths lie in its performances and characterisation. Audran’s Hélène is a compellingly complex figure: a proto-feminist who smokes cigarettes and defies small-town norms, yet whose moral and emotional boundaries are constantly tested. Her chemistry with Yanne’s Paul is magnetic, his enigmatic charm contrasting with the simmering menace beneath. Yanne’s portrayal resists easy categorisation; even as clues mount, his motives remain opaque until the final act, a feat that demands both subtlety and precision. Their dynamic drives the narrative forward, compensating for Chabrol’s occasionally sluggish pacing.

Where Le Boucher falters is in its thematic restraint. Unlike Chabrol’s later works, which savagely dissect the hypocrisy of the French bourgeoisie, here Tremolat is portrayed as an almost idyllic, unproblematic haven. The prehistoric Cougnac Caves, nearby location used as a backdrop for the school trip—feels more like a tourist plug than a symbolic choice. Chabrol avoids probing the town’s social dynamics, instead focusing on the personal entanglements of his protagonists. This decision, while tonally consistent with the film’s focus on individual psychology, leaves the work feeling emotionally shallow compared to his sharper critiques.

The film’s most compelling subtext lies in its implicit critique of French militarism. Paul’s trauma from colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria—a conflict still raw in 1970—hints at how institutional violence corrupts the human psyche. Yet this thread is never fully explored; the film teases the idea that war turned Paul into a monster but offers no conclusive answers. The ending, a melodramatic confrontation between Hélène and Paul, is both emotionally charged and narratively unsatisfying. It resolves the plot but leaves the characters’ motivations and the film’s broader implications unresolved, a dissonance that undermines its power.

Perhaps the film’s greatest misstep is its intrusive soundtrack by Pierre Jansen. The score, a jarring blend of dissonant strings and repetitive motifs, intrudes on scenes that would otherwise rely on silence and suggestion. This overbearing approach contrasts sharply with the visual restraint elsewhere, diminishing the film’s potential for true psychological depth.

Le Boucher has moments of brilliance—particularly in direction, acting, and suspense—that earn it a place in discussions of French thriller cinema. Yet its lack of thematic boldness, uneven pacing, and distracting score prevent it from achieving the greatness its individual scenes might suggest. Chabrol’s work here is a reminder that even masterful craftsmanship cannot always elevate a story that lacks the courage of its own convictions. While it may not be a classic, Le Boucher is as a flawed but fascinating exploration of human fragility, one that rewards patient viewing with flashes of undeniable brilliance.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9