Le Boucher
BBC4, Sunday 03 October 10:30pm - 12:00amOne of Claude Chabrol's most accomplished and celebrated films has the director returning to the provincial world of his first film Le Beau Serge a decade later. Chabrol's then wife, Stéphane Audran plays a village schoolteacher who gradually comes to realise that her new friend, a shy butcher (Jean Yanne), is the sex murderer the police are searching for. With certain nods to Chabrol's idol Alfred Hitchcock, the film is much more than a thriller - it's a sympathetic psychological study of sexual frustration. Supported by the actual inhabitants of the town in Périgord in which it is set, the two leads are superb. The film is brilliantly shot by Jean Rabier, Chabrol's usual cinematographer.
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Widescreen
Cast * Hélène - Stéphane Audran
* Popaul - Jean Yanne
* Angelo - Antonio Passalia
* Léon Hamel - Mario Beccaria
* Père Cahrpy - Pasquale Ferone
* Police Inspector Grumbach - Roger Rudel
* Charles - William Guérault
Directed by: Claude Chabrol
Filmed in: 1969