Blood of the Beasts

Infobox Film
name = Blood of the Beasts


image_size = 150px
caption = Video Cover
director = Georges Franju
producer = Paul Legros
writer = Georges Franju
narrator = Georges Hubert
Nicole Ladmiral
starring =
music = Joseph Kosma
cinematography = Marcel Fradetal
editing = André Joseph
distributor = The Criterion Collection
released = 1949
runtime = 20 min
country = France
language = French
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:6151
imdb_id = 0041842

"Blood of the Beasts" ("Le Sang des bêtes") is a 1949 short French documentary film written and directed by Georges Franju. "Blood of the Beasts" was Franju's first film and is narrated by Georges Hubert and Nicole Ladmiral. The film features on the Criterion Collection DVD for "Eyes Without a Face" (1959).

ynopsis

Franju's film contrasts peaceful scenes of Parisian suburbia with scenes from a slaughterhouse. The film documents the slaughtering of a horse, sheep, and calves; once the horse is stunned by a pistol, it is bled and butchered. The film is narrated without emotive language.

Production

Franju states that he wasn't interested on the subject of slaughterhouses when he decided to make the film, but the location around the building was the Ourcq Canal allowing him to make a documentary film. Franju stated by using a documentary film format, he was able to use both locations as lyical counterpoints and "to explain it as a realist while remaining a surrealist by displacing the object in another context. In this new setting, the object rediscovers it's quality as an object"."Eyes Without a Face" (1997; DVD, The Criterion Collection, 2004).]

"Blood of the Beasts" was made as a black and white film as an aesthetic. Franju states "If it were in colour, it'd be repulsive...the sensation people get would be physical one."

Awards

*Grand Prix International du Court Sujet 1950

Notes