Claude Chabrol's thriller 'Le Boucher' is released in France in 1970

Le Boucher (The Butcher) was a French thriller directed by Claude Chabrol and released in 1970. It is set in a small village in the Dordogne, in south-western France, where a series of young women are murdered.

The film centres on two people: Hélène, the village schoolmistress, played by Stéphane Audran, and Popaul, the local butcher, played by Jean Yanne. They form a quiet, tentative friendship. Hélène gradually begins to suspect that Popaul may be the killer, yet she is drawn to him and hesitates to act. Chabrol treats the story less as a whodunit than as a study of desire, guilt and unspoken understanding between two lonely people.

The film came from the middle of Chabrol's most celebrated period, when he made a run of precise, ironic crime dramas about provincial French life. It is often counted among his finest works and helped establish his reputation as a French Hitchcock-style master of suspense. Its blend of rural setting, domestic detail and moral ambiguity has made it a frequent reference point for later directors who set crime stories in small communities.