The Mechanical Butcher
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About The Mechanical Butcher
A live pig is pushed into a wooden machine. Someone turns a crank. Hams, sausages, and blood pudding come out the other side and are lifted clear. The Lumière catalogue classes the view as a humorous subject, not a record of a real shop.
Cast & crew
More about The Mechanical Butcher
Louis Lumière filmed catalogue view no. 107, La Charcuterie mécanique, which the Lumière catalogue places between 16 January and 18 April 1896, with a Lyon screening on 18 April 1896. The catalog year here is 1895. Wikidata gives the length as 52 seconds.
Themes
Look
The camera stays on the machine. A pig goes in one end and cuts of pork come out the other.
Preservation
The Lumière catalogue lists a negative and a duplicate negative.
Notes
- Louis Lumière marked the view as his own in the list he gave Georges Sadoul in 1946.
- The catalogue suggests Clos des Plages at La Ciotat as the place, in brackets.
- Phil Hardy's Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction lists it as the first science-fiction film.
- A Lumière negative and one Lumière duplicate negative are recorded in the catalogue.
Scenes
- The pig disappears into the cabinet.
- Hams and sausages are pulled from the far door.
Also available
- Internet Archive (charcuterie-mecanique-1895)
