The Pig

Jean Eustache returned to his hometown, the farming community of Pessac, to create this cinema-verité record of the ritual slaughter of a pig, codirected with Jean-Michel Barjol. The documentary captures in unflinching detail—and in beautifully unpolished black-and-white cinematography—the procedural killing, dismembering, and processing of the animal, resulting in a depiction of both the physical gruesomeness and artisanal craft of such work. THE PIG not only builds upon Eustache’s ethnographic representation of working-class customs and traditions in the previous year’s THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC but also develops the tough yet compassionate lens he would soon apply to his narrative features.