Le Boucher

+ intro by season curator Catherine Wheatley

Chabrol’s most celebrated and sinister film sees a tender friendship between a schoolteacher and local butcher darken as a series of murders unsettles life in their village.

  • Director

    Claude Chabrol

  • With

    Stéphane Audran, Jean Yanne

  • France-Italy 1970. 92min

  • Digital (restoration)

  • Certificate

    15

  • English subtitles

A schoolteacher and a butcher strike up a tender, tentative friendship in a small Périgord village, just as a series of murders unsettle the local community. A work of extraordinary restraint, in which the landscape itself seems to harbour violence. Le Boucher profits from Jean Yanne’s remarkable performance – one of the great, mostly unsung, achievements of French cinema.

Contains scenes of graphic violence or injury and harm towards children.

See other screenings of Le Boucher.

See the Philosophical Screens discussion on Le Boucher in the BFI Blue Room following this screening.

Also available on BFI Player