User Reviews

Luis Buñuel was Georges Franju's favorite filmmaker. Now imagine the shocking eyeball- slicing scene of "Le Chien Andalou" (which, as you may well know, was a dead sheep's eyeball) taken to the goriest consequences: Franju takes his camera to a slaughterhouse in the outskirts of post-war Paris, and the appalling scene from Buñuel & Dali's classic feels like child's game compared to what is shown in this short documentary.

Here, we see -- in all horrifying details, truth and gore -- horses, cows, calves and sheep being matter-of-factly, bureaucratically slaughtered by dexterous butchers with axes, knives, hammers, and they don't even stop their smoking or casual whistling while doing their jobs. Among these indelible, nauseating scenes, we see an employee "caressing" a horse's head seconds before fatally puncturing its skull; the Berkeleyish "chorus line ballet" of decapitated sheep's paws; the still convulsive trunk of one decapitated, blood-drained, paw-less calf; and the gallons of steaming blood serving as an "illustration" of Charles Trenet's famous song "La Mer" ("The Sea"), heartily sung by one of the workers. In "Le Sang des Bêtes" you will see probably the most horrifyingly graphic scenes EVER filmed.

This film brings uncomfortable thoughts: on the one hand, how most of us -- consumers -- implicitly condone with this methodical, "impersonal" slaughtering of domestic, harmless creatures as long as we don't think very much about how meat, leather, soaps, etc "magically" appear at the supermarket or in a store. On the other hand, we wonder how butchers and other slaughterhouse workers manage to sublimate guilt, compassion and repulsion in a totally matter-of-fact, professional manner (they have to earn a living), proving how human beings can adapt to almost ANY circumstance (surely then-recent WW2 Nazi horror in concentration camps is very clear reference in "Le Sang...:").

"Le Sang..." features as an extra on the DVD that brings Franju's horror masterpiece "Les Yeux Sans Visage" (1959) and it's totally apropos: it's a perfectly macabre pas-de- deux. Impossible not to link the cold-hearted slaughter and skinning of the animals in "Le Sang..." with high-brow-gone-berserk surgeon Pierre Brasseur face-skinning his helpless victims with flawless craftsmanship in "Les Yeux". (Once again, the Nazi concentration camp "scientific" experiments are paralleled).

This is compulsory viewing for animal-rights activists and environmentalists. Don't even think of watching "Le Sang des Bêtes" if you're faint-hearted or after a meal; and beware you meat-eaters, this one may turn you in a vegetarian or at least make your next hamburger taste REALLY bad.

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.

"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.

Franju's short 1949 documentary of a Paris slaughterhouse is riveting, disturbing and beautifully filmed in black-and-white.

Though the subject matter and their ultimate demise is an eye opener, the manner in which men and women butcher the beasts is the most distressing. The butcher slaughter as calmly and methodically as anyone else doing a day's work. This coincides with Franju's belief that true, genuine horror is found in every day life - not in mad scientists, creepy monsters or wild story lines far removed from reality.

Regardless, the cinematography is outstanding, capturing a moment in time few get to witness.

If you're curious as to how animals were slaughtered fifty years ago, or if you have a taste for the macabre, this is the thought-provoking short for you.

George Franju had one of the strangest careers in the French cinema.His shorts were revolutionary.When he began full-length features ,as contemporary of the Nouvelle Vague,he was drastically different.All his best works ("la tête contre les murs" "les Yeux sans Visage" "Thomas L'Imposteur" even his minor films such as "Pleins Feux sur l'Assassin" and his remake of Feuillade's "Judex) have a sense of mystery you would never find in his peers' works (with the exception of some of Chabrol's ones).

"Le sang des bêtes" has not lost its strength even in 2006.It still stands as one of the best shorts ever done.It depicts horror: inside a slaughterhouse ,where the beasts suffer and man himself risks his life ,there's a world nobody had entered before Franju 's camera let us in.The pictures are sometimes so harrowing,so unbearable,you find yourself looking away.There's this sublime picture of a horse ,bowing before being shot.

The commentary is brilliant,and the two actors who say it are to be commended.

Georges Hubert uses a neuter voice,even when he describes the most terrifying of the scenes: should he depict the riverboat for sightseeing,he would not use a different tone.He makes me think of the commentary in Luis Bunuel's " Hurdes" Nicole Ladmiral,on the other hand has a warm voice ,sometimes verging on tenderness as she describes the urban lugubrious landscapes outside the slaughterhouse.Life goes one ,people fall in love,around the buildings with its sinister "steeple" which is not that of a church . Nowadays Nicole Ladmiral is forgotten:her career was short-lived and very sad.After an important part in "Journal d'un curé de Campagne ",Robert Bresson's classic, she could never find another role worthy of her talent (except for some uninteresting supporting parts on stage)and she threw herself under a train in a metro station.

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.

The Criterion DVD "Les Yeux sans visage" aka Eyes without a Face" also includes the 20 minutes long documentary by Georges Franju, "The Blood of the Beasts" (1949) about an ordinary day at the slaughterhouse in Paris. This short film is one of the most horrifying ever made. What makes it even more difficult to see – the matter-of-fact efficient way the professional and skilled butchers do their jobs never stop smoking or whistling…. In one of the comments, the author recalls the famous eyeball- slicing scene of "Le Chien Andalou" which was a dead cow's eyeball. That shot only last a second, and it is still shocking. Now imagine much more gruesome and unbearable scenes showing the killing of horses, cows, calves and sheep over and over and over again and that unspeakable terror and fear in their eyes...Paris (or London, or New York City or Rome or any other place in the world) needs their steaks, chops, and burgers

I should give some disclosure: I eat meat, not every day but enough to consider myself a fan of things like steaks and burgers and hot dogs and the occasional ribs (chicken is another matter). Watching Blood of the Beasts is, basically, enough to make anyone who's ever bitten into any of what I've mentioned completely sick to your stomach. Or anyone for that matter: the bluntness of the camera, of looking straight on and abstracting these images of a slaughterhouse in Paris, is the bravest thing imaginable. I'd compare it to Resnais' ability to keep the audience focused on the horror of the holocaust. So much horror shown right in front of us where it's impossible to look any other way.

It is what it is, and it's all the more shocking. Heads cut off, limbs town, skulls bashed, organs ripped and blood flowing down the concrete into drains, lambs shaking as they're still living, I could go on and on, but it's crucial to experience it. It will make even the most hard-bitten meat lovers nearly come to tears. The film-making is intense because of its objectivity: while Franju is choosing what to show us, it is all what makes up this slaughterhouse. It's an act of surrealism of Bunuel in Un Chien Andalou or even Land without Bread almost by going into such a depth of ultra-realism (maybe the slicing of the eyeball comes closest to recognizing the "ugh" factor that for 5 seconds is made nearly 20 minutes here) that it becomes like something of a work of poetry- dark, hellish poetry that would give Burroughs nightmares.

Staggering work, completely unforgettable. Don't watch this alone if you're a vegan!

"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.

In a suburban outskirt of post-WW2 Paris, we are enamoured by the beauty of one of France's pearls. It's an ordinary day where time seamlessly and relaxingly passes by. We wonder, "what's going on?"

It's only when you search inside the buildings one actually realizes the life (or lack thereof) in the city. Paris, a destination spot for romantics and travellers abroad, has its meat industry displayed--not their biggest attraction. It's not a heinous crime nor an "extreme" act. Yet it's only when peering behind the guarding walls we see the treachery the human race is capable of. Choosing to disregard mass murder is one thing, but the blood on our hands, innocence stolen and suffering caused is something we will take to the grave.

The complete sense of normality is the most sinister aspect of this short film. Rarely do people actively consider what they are consuming. We observe how very regular the acts of slaughter are depicted and it appears to be an outrageous crime. But it's not. It happens in our very own backyard and in the most elegant of places.

Everyone who wants to see the brutal reality of a slaughterhouse, at least circa 1949 in Paris, should be open to seeing this film. Although some people seem to have come away thinking this is was an anti-meat movie, that is only their point of view. Yes, you see horrific images of horses, cows and sheep butchered. It will likely turn your stomach. But I doubt this documentary was made with the intention of turning people off meat.

The director focuses on the people too: the man whose own leg had to be cut off after an accident, for example. And it is clear that this business is just a job to many of the workers, and there is no moralizing about it.

It is difficult to watch. But it is the truth (I guess); and really, if you think about it, the animals in this film are arguably treated better (killed quickly) than in that recent undercover PETA video of downer cows.

In the periphery of Paris, the fate of horses, cows and other animals in a slaughterhouse is detailed in this short documentary. My first comment about this disgusting short is that fortunately it is not in color. I believe that there are two possible views of this short: technically, my opinion is that it is perfect. The shootings of Paris, the cinematography, the camera, the skill of the workers, in this regard everything is perfectly shown. However, the theme is simply awful and of a completely bad taste. I do not know if George Franju was vegetarian, but probably his intention showing the slaughter of animals, inclusive of an offspring, was to make the viewers become vegetarian. I believe most of the pseudo-intellectual readers will not like my review, but that was my impression of this documentary. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Sangue das Bestas" ("The Blood of the Beasts")

The film opens by showing life in a Paris suburb and the portal to a slaughterhouse with its monument of a bull in brass and then we move inside the slaughterhouse. The camera is like a fly on the wall, it sees everything but never interact or interfere with what's happening. And for anyone not raised on a farm where they did their own slaughtering, this is indeed a shocking document: A horse collapses in 1 second as it is shot with a bolt pistol in the head and a cow tumbles after a hammer with a long pipe on the hammerhead has been buried in its skull. But that is just the starter on this blood feast. The main cause being numerous calves beheaded and a row of sheeps having their throat slit and in between that animals being flayed and gutted. The slaughterhouse has its own stream in the floor, where rivers of blood is running from the slaughter. I can imagine urbanized children having nightmare for weeks after seeing this film..and their parents forsaking the meat for vegetarian delicacies after this remorseless view of the animals demise to satisfy the meat-eaters cravings. I am a vegetarian myself, not out of conviction, but because I was raised that way and as a such, I am thankfully free from dealing with the dilemma of wanting the meat but not wanting to deal with the the killing and butchery. Today death of animals has become a remote affair to most people, out of sight, out of mind. Not so when you see this film. Black and white images can indeed be gruesome, color just wouldn't have made this film worse. Even the squeamish should find the courage to view this film, just once! This is what death looks like when a real artist trains his lens on it, it is beautiful too! 10/10

This film works on many different levels. As a boy living in a small northern town I remember the Abattoir, on the edge of town, a large imposing Victorian building. Across the road,a playing field, with young people kicking a ball about. In the distance the imposing lake land fells. Inside the Abattoir were scenes exactly like 'Le Sang' except there were no horses and all animals stunned with captive bolt pistols. The skill of the workers was incredible, their humour brilliant, and all of them liked animals, it was only their job that demanded they had to kill and dissect them.

Le Sang depicts exactly what happened in all the Abattoirs of Europe at the time of filming! The trade is ruthless, Skilled, shocking,wet, dirty, smelly but never wantonly cruel, just efficient, but most of all shocking to those who never set foot in an abattoir.

A superb subject for surrealism- but also a historical record, no more do we use the pole axe or the pithing cane when killing cattle!!

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.

This remarkable short documentary stands like a monumental judgement on the human race, and how we, as the supposedly superior species are, at heart, cold and indifferent to the suffering and fate of other sentient beings with whom we share the planet. Franju, with detached simplicity, makes us look at what most of us prefer to either not see or even think about - the precise process by which living animals are converted into food for us to eat. Not only does the film show the plight of creatures, but it also shows the dehumanising effect this work has on the slaughterers for whom slitting the throat of a sheep, or shooting a captive bolt pistol into the forehead of a magnificent horse, has become a routine assignment of little consequence or gravity. I first saw this film in 1952, and went in a carnivore, and came out a vegetarian, and have remained one ever since because of it. Such is the power of this objective and powerful documentary. All too often in life we depend upon others to do our dirty work for us so that we can remain "pure souled" and unsullied by such barbaric degradation, but we cannot look away forever, and whilst Franju doesn't preach, (there is very little commentary, and what there is merely explains what's happening), he makes us see with our own eyes the endless convey-belt parade of slaughter and accompanying horror. Didactic cinema at its most dynamic and memorable, and the true precursor of "animal liberation".

Now, other people seem to find this to be a GREAT film, a MASTERPIECE, but I don't necessarily find it to be either of those things. That doesn't mean I found it to be bad, it was a quite interesting documentary short, that did genuinely disturbed me.

It is a very simple premise, it is just footage that was shot inside a slaughterhouse, with some narration. It is very fascinating, although highly unsettling, although it didn't really change my life. As I said, I was highly disturbed throughout the film, and for a good purpose, but it didn't make me become a vegetarian or a vegan. I guess at this point I'll never become a vegetarian/vegan.

However, just because I'm not a vegetarian/vegan doesn't mean that it won't make YOU possibly think of becoming one! I can fully understand why someone would be affected by the horrific imagery in this documentary film would start thinking way more about what they eat and how it's made.

This was an extra on the dvd for Eyes Without A Face, and it was probably the hardest thing I have ever watched...I applaud it, I truly do, but it's got me thinking twice about being a vegetarian. If this were in color, I don't know if my heart could have taken it.

How far removed are we from our food, in this modern world. Even my visceral reaction is something to think about.

Le Sang des Bêtes is Georges Franju's second film, a grotesque 20 minute documentary detailing a normal day in a Parisian slaughterhouse. This has seriously gotta be some of the most repulsive imagery I've EVER seen captured on film - horses, sheep and cows all casually (and in extreme graphic detail) eviscerated, disemboweled and literally turned inside-out by jolly, whistling butchers.

First off we see a gorgeous white stallion brought in and swiftly dispatched via a bolt-pistol to the forehead, then a peg-legged butcher cuts its throat and steaming blood gushes out in waves. As its hooves are being hacked off a narrator nonchalantly explains how they'll probably be used for "women's toiletries". Next up are the cows - no bolt-pistol for them, they just get immediately decapitated then have their limbs sawn off. Even then, the cow's torso still violently convulses. We then see a matronly woman slice open the torso's belly and manually empty its overflowing bowels into the concrete guttering that surrounds the work floor.

Intercut with the slaughterhouse scenes is footage of the surrounding areas - seemingly the slums of Paris - which is narrated by a woman. About mid-way through a suitable quote from the poet Charles Baudelaire appears on screen: ''I shall strike you without anger And without hate, like a butcher''

The final slaughterhouse segment focuses on sheep, this section has some of the most surreal visuals - namely a long line of limbless / headless sheep all convulsing at once, like some kinda spastic chorus line. Wow, this is unforgettable - yet undeniably repellent - cinema indeed! 9/10

Believe me - "Blood Of The Beasts" will shock you right out of your socks with its graphically brutal look at slaughterhouses. This documentary's super-gory, in-your-face imagery leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

In all of my days, I've never seen such a horrific film as this one before. It's hard to imagine that both men & women, alike, have chosen to do this sort of beastly work on a day-to-day basis.

P.S. - Have a barf-bag ready when you watch "Blood Of The Beasts"!

Together with Henri Langlois, Georges Franju was one of the founders of the legendary Cinematheque Francaise but his own, compact, production is still quite unknown. He is best known for his later feature, often categorized as a horror film, Eyes Without a Face (1960). His features were outstanding, masterful and brilliant but his earlier short documentaries might be even greater. The hard world was the subject in all of his documentaries; he depicted a world, without illusions, which was not better at all after the war it had just went through - WWII. In these documentaries he dealt with the truths behind human monuments (Hotel des invalides), the misuse of good intentions and accomplishments. Two of these documentaries stand out, and are his most well known ones: Hotel des invalides which was a pacifistic reportage of a war museum and Le sang des betes; a documentary about a slaughterhouse in Paris.

It would be juvenile to see Le sang des betes as a film about animal cruelty, or even as a moral study. Of course, one might say that watching it is the first step taken towards vegetarianism but to my mind there is much more in it, and I am a vegan. Le sang des betes depicts man deforming nature into something obnoxious. It's a poetically realistic film, filled with fantastic and grotesque details, where actual sights characterized by tragicalness.

The film is ultra-realism but also dream-like. It's in the same area with Luis Bunuel's "documentary" Las Hurdes - A Land without Bread; a film so honest that its realism turns into surrealism. In Le sang des betes Franju gave reality an artificial expression; he created a natural environment which turned into a setting - the contrast of the slaughterhouse and the outside world. The material world of the film reinforces this idea: old furniture thrown away, flee market, drying sheets and surrealistic details such as a mannequin, painting (Renoir?), umbrella and children playing outside.

Before we are taken to the harsh reality of the slaughterhouse Franju depicts the world outside; people falling in love, children having fun, city sights and life passing by. Then we are taken away from this, through a brilliant poetic shift; a woman gets kissed and a fan goes through the picture as we are taken to the slaughterhouse. This surreal, poetic detail is very important; from the touch of kiss to the slaughterhouse through a dream-like shift - there is also a slaughterhouse.

The irony in the commentary tracks is not juvenile agitation and doesn't rank in the simple level of anarchism. Georges Franju had the same intensity of tenderness that many great filmmakers have; for instance the earlier mentioned Luis Bunuel. He had the courage to show violence without beautifying it one bit. The introduction of the used equipment; killing machinery, is honest and realistic.

There is no quarrel about the film's obvious allegory. The victims of the following day are already known; a strong metaphor to the holocaust of which four years had just passed. In the end we see the gates of the slaughterhouse closing, or are they just the same gates of Auschwitz we've seen in so many pictures? The film is both poetic and realistic, dream-like and genuine, timeless and strongly historical.

I turned this off within the first five minutes. It's very sick and disturbing, the moment I turned this off was when the beautiful white horse was let into the slaughterhouse and it's skull was punctured by a small tubed instrument. This creature was lying on the floor in a state of shock before it died. The narrator said the animal dies instantaneously, it didn't. I don't agree with graphic realism towards animals, insects or any living creature. I was very disappointed as I had just watched 'Eyes Without a face' which was a brilliant movie and this short film was attached, which spoilt my night - as I couldn't hurt a fly, never mind watching this savage documentary.

reading other reviews on this page, I had noticed they used words such as aesthetic - this is not art or beauty. I can imagine that the documentary would be very articulate and profound but not aesthetic.

If you want to give up meat or have trouble remaining on a meat-free diet, then this movie might help you out -- if by "help" you mean fill you with a disgust and horror that makes you swear off meat forever.

It's a documentary about three of Paris' slaughterhouses in 1949: one devoted to horses, the second to cattle and the last to sheep. Each time, we see some peaceful or interesting setting, and then move within the gates of the abbatoir, and watch the animals being slaughtered. Yes, there's lots of blood and twitching and offal, which makes a dedicated carnivore like me raise his eyebrows. But what can you expect from the director of EYES WITHOUT A FACE but something like Grand Guignol?

Franju did not start out as a film maker. While he made his first documentary short in 1934, for the next fifteen years, he worked from Henri Langlois in getting the Cinematecque Francaise started.