Blood of the Beasts

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.

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.

"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.

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.