CHABROL'S POIGNANT MURDER

Conventional thrillers always seem to be filled with plenty of darkness, harassed detectives sleuthing innumerable suspects and plenty of overt violence. At the end of it all, so the moral goes, the good cop comes out on top.

When Claude Chabrol makes a thriller it is entirely different. "The Butcher' is almost in the form of a film essay.

In fact, the murder of three girls from a small French rural town assumes a sort of sub-plot around which the main essence of the film is played out.

The film's main characters and plot are carefully and thoughtfully unwrapped rather than revealed at the beginning for all to see. It opens with celebrations at a wedding of a local schoolteacher.

But the camera selects the main participants by regularly zooming in on Helene, the young, vivacious headmistress of the school and Popaul, who has returned to his native town after 15 years in the army.

And then only as he walks her home after the wedding does he reveal that he was a butcher in the army, like his father before him. Do you like meat?' he asks her. A strange question on any count.

The first murder is introduced almost casually. In silence the camera pans on the local gendarmerie and then fades. It is linked with the two main characters in passing. One of the children in the playground mentions the fact as they are hustled inside for the class, police with dogs march past to examine the body and look for clues.

Yet the same day Popaul arrives at the classroom with a present for the headmistress—a leg of lamb. Then the film turns again as she takes the initiative and much to his sur. prise invites him to dinner. In the evening it twists yet again when he is the first to mention the murder.

By now Chabrol has built up a relationship between the two. she has no lover because of : disappointing affair some years ago. Yet it is obvious she feels something for the local butcher who is kind and generous and altogether an apparently. pleas ant man who was sickened by the carnage he saw in Algeria and Vietnam.

Only mid-way through the film does it tighten in tension with the first real evidence that Popaul is the murderer.

And Chabrol manages to maintain the link nicely between the couple by having Helene discover the body on a school outing. She also finds at the scene a lighter she gave the butcher for his birthday.

Perkets it and nays media she the police.

Still the plot revolves around her deep felt but hidden passion for the man. And this continues throughout the film. The butcher himself maintains this affection for Helene, throwing the murders which he has committed into some sort of relief.

Inevitably, of course