Le sang des bêtes (1949)

English title: Blood of the Beasts.

Documentary which intercuts the bucolic outskirts of Paris with the depiction of the work in several slaughterhouses situated nearby.

The thematical essence of Eyes Without a Face (means/end dichotomy) was present already in this earlier short: the end is feeding humans, the means is killing animals; the landscape in the vicinity of a slaughterhouse does not betray the brutality going on inside it; moreover, said brutality does not in turn belie the rectitude of character of the men and women who work there. The plain assertion that Blood of the Beasts makes is: most people eat meat (or would if they could), and don't see anything horrible or reproachable in that act; and if most of them would probably be incapable of watching Blood of the Beasts in its entirety, it's OK, that is how society functions, namely by keeping its members in the ignorance of the subjacent violence which is necessary for such trivial acts as feeding oneself. Seen from another angle, this is a film about the human allegiance to humans, which excludes non-humans such as cows, horses and sheep.