The Butcher

Le Boucher The Butcher is a 1970 French psychological thriller film written and directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Stéphane Audran and Jean Yanne. Set in the village of Trémolat, it tells the story of butcher Popaul who falls in love with Hélène, the head teacher of the school, while a murder spree is taking place in the area. Plot Butcher Popaul and Hélène, head teacher of the village school, become acquainted at the assistant teacher's wedding. He tells her that he had served in the army for 15 years as a means of getting away from his father, whom he speaks disdainfully of. During the next weeks, the two repeatedly meet and spend time together, but always on a strictly platonic level. While gathering mushrooms together, Popaul asks Hélène why she is not in a relationship, which she explains with an unhappy love affair years ago, which took her months to recover from. Popaul in return tells her of the awful things he witnessed in Indochina and the Algerian war. Soon after the news of the murder of a young woman has reached the town, a second victim, the assistant teacher's wife, is discovered by Hélène and her pupils during a school excursion. At the site of the murder, Hélène finds a conspicuous cigarette lighter which she had given to Popaul as a present. Instead of informing the police, she hides it in a drawer in her home. When she meets Popaul the next time, he lights her cigarette with a lighter looking exactly like the one she had given him. Hélène is relieved, believing that the lighter she found was not his. Hélène agrees to Popaul's offer to repaint her room, which he does while she is out. Looking for a cloth to clean up with, he discovers the lighter she had hidden and pockets it. When Hélène finds the lighter gone after he has left, she realises that he knows she can identify him as the murderer. Seeing Popaul from her window, she locks the doors, but he has already entered the house. Popaul, cornering her at knife point, tells her that he had bought an identical lighter after losing the first one, and explains what drives him to commit the murders. Hélène, convinced that he will stab her, closes her eyes, but Popaul thrusts the knife into his abdomen instead.