Updates, Live: Le Sang des Bêtes, 1949

I saw this documentary one memorable evening at the Gramercy Theater: Marcia and Amos Vogel, together with their friend Jack Goelman were there, reviving in front of us the spirit of Cinema 16.

I've already told you all this. Three documentaries had been selected by them, and this one was the most impressive. Almost unbearable, I would say even more, it was extremely difficult to watch, a painful experience.

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.

Le Sang des Bêtes (Blood of the Beasts), 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.