Cro Magnon Woman
At the halfway point of Claude Chabrol’s Le boucher, Mademoiselle Hélène takes her pupils on a visit to the Périgord caves nearby, not Lascaux but something similar. She explains about Cro Magnon man being above the level of truly primitive man because he had ‘aspirations’ rather than simply ‘desires’, and a pupil asks, ‘How would he make out if he was living among us now?’ Her response? He would either adapt or die.
This apparently harmless exchange, apart from showing how on top of their curriculum both teacher and pupil are, is positioned in narrative terms directly before the celebrated picnic on the cliff top, itself interrupted by the Marnie-like drops of blood from victim no.2, and significant because it is at this point that Hélène discovers the lighter, linking Popaul, her butcher friend, to the murders.
Which is interesting because I had thought that the film was, in the manner of the Master’s Psycho, based on a false trail, a false assumption: in the former film it is that Marion is the protagonist, and not Norman. Here it was the reverse: we thought he was the focus of our interest, directed by Hélène’s, whereas in fact she was the more enigmatic character. After all, he is tipped as the culprit for the murders from the off, with all his testimony to the butchery of military life (rather overdone, it has to be said, by Chabrol the scénariste), while Hélène on the other hand invites all sorts of questions. Why does she flirt with him when she suspects his feelings towards her? Why does she not inform the police about finding the lighter, when another victim’s life is at stake? What is she thinking as she stands all night on the bank of the Dordogne?
And so, has Chabrol presented us with a poser? Is he saying that Hélène, with her celibate purity, is alone capable of bringing down the monster, like a virgin in a fairytale, or that her silence over the lighter is because of her loyalty as a friend, mistakenly thinking that she can save him from himself, like Beauty and the Beast? Is Popaul the avatar of Cro Magnon man, unable to make sense of a world corrupted by bestial impulses, so that he is corrupted himself and perishes because he falls in love? There are a number of markers that might support such an interpretation: his clearly traumatised state through witnessing atrocities in the military, his inability to accept Hélène’s argument for chastity, his painting of her apartment, and his skill with slaughtering and choosing the right animals. His ill-bred dwelling over unsavoury details from his Algerian war experiences, and badmouthing of his father and former schoolmistress, also support this idea that he is ‘primitive man’ incarnate, except that with ‘Mademoiselle Hélène’ he is the perfect gentleman. However, is it not significant that the murders begin with his meeting at the wedding with Hélène? Like Norman, he desires her and the killing starts.
I don’t think it matters, in the end, which of these theses is correct, but they serve to underline what a subtle text this is, in spite of its formal narrative simplicity. Pierre Jansen’s modernist tintinnabulations on the soundtrack are definitive indicators, perhaps, that there is more here than first meets the eye.
