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The Butcher | Year: 1971 Classification: Horror Directed: - Claude Chabrol Actors/Actresses: - Stéphane Audran - Jean Yanne ...a passionate story in the backdrop of murder... Le Boucher is a passionate story about the French countryside butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne) falling in love with the town's head teacher, Helene (Stéphane Audran), which is set in a backdrop of a series of grisly murders. Helene is hesitant on entrusting Popaul, as she has been burnt before in a previous relationship, but Popaul remains devoted on pursuing Helene's trust and affection. Slowly, Helene opens up to Popaul's devotion to find herself in a troubling situation. La Boucher is slow paced and this is done through tedious effects that provide a strong idea of Popaul's determination to gain Helene's affection. This leaves the viewer with an outstanding cinematic experience that offers much thought of the psychology behind the ending. A poor version of a great movie As an earlier reviewer has observed this film needs to be seen letterboxed. Despite saying 'letterboxed' on the DVD box, this version (from Patherfinder Home Entertainment) could not be viewed by my standard DVD player in letterbox form. DVD info According to the packaging this DVD is meant to be letter-boxed (enhanced for 16X9 televisions). Yes and no. On my up-scale DVD player the DVD projects in full-screen mode. Like most DVD players in the U.S. there is no X-Y feature to correct this. My odd ball brand region-free DVD player does, however, play the DVD in letterbox (though it needed quite a lot of correcting using the X-Y feature). Go figure. Since the film is a wide aspect ratio (the packaging doesn't state the ratio but I'm guessing somewhere around 2.7:1) it is very important that it be viewed letterbox. The DVD has an audio commentary delivered by a couple film school teachers who spend a little too much time entertaining each other, though I've heard much worse commentaries on much more expensive DVDs. The only other special feature is a trailer. Obviously I'm rating the DVD high on the basis of the film alone. Le Boucher is a great film. Chabrol's films frequently have a plot arch that is virtually flat. Everybody compares Chabrol to Hitchcock, and there are certainly plenty of visual references to Hitchcock, but Hitchcock would never tell stories this way, without melodrama, about people this irredeemably emotionally blunted. (IMDB has some reviews of this film that miss the point that the teach Helene is every bit as evil as the butcher.) Not every Chabrol film works for me every viewing but I've never been able to turn away when watching this film. Buy The Butcher at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on The Butcher Search with the Priority Search Engine on The Butcher This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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