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Plot: A plastic surgeon responsible for disfiguring his daughter because of reckless driving attempts to give her a new face by grafting on those of young women he kills.
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:August 1, 2008
Eyes Without A Face: one of the creepiest, most depressing, most beautiful, best horror movies of all time. It's completely underrated. Every shot is beautiful. The mask is so creepy and eerie, it's very hard for me to forget about it. And there's actually one really good, gory scene. The ending is still a favorite scene of mine.
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MCT:June 27, 2008
Definitely an eerie concept, but knowing the capacity of the writers from the novel, I expected mind-blowing results. It's arguable that the ending is a good entry on its own; I accept it for its poetic significance. Even so, I would rather re-watch "Les Diaboliques" or "Vertigo" than this.
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MCT:June 27, 2008
Horror Not to Miss List Commentary:
Great cinematography and a Gothic plot quite controversial for a feature film on its time. Compared to Hitchcock's Psycho in terms of visual language, it does deliver but didn't strike me as the "perfect piece" it was hyped to me as. Still, most viewers will be able to bite into this a bit more firmly, as my big gripe was predictability of this film within the whole of Gothic horror tales. -
MCT:June 20, 2008
seriously creepy. from the writers of diabolique and vertigo. alida valli was soo evil and the ending was just beautiful
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MCT:June 2, 2008Dans l'esprit des Diaboliques de Clouzot, de par sa noirceur inattendue pour son époque, ce film offre une kyrielle de symboliques remarquables : « Tes chiens sauvages veulent être libres ; ils en aboient d'envie dans leur cave, quand ton esprit se propose d'ouvrir toutes les prisons. » Nietzsche, De l'Arbre Sur La Montagne dans Ainsi Parlait Zarathoustra. Je sais pas si Georges Franju lisait Nietzsche mais avouez que l'intertextualité est frappante !
Et puis ces yeux qui observent des visages sans être vus... comme un appel téléphonique sans réponse ; non vraiment c'est bien foutu, y a pas à chier.
« Ton esprit se propose d'ouvrir toutes les prisons » et enfin les colombes s'envolent ... -
MCT:May 18, 2008
Strangely beautiful film about a gory subject matter. A scene of a surgery is mild by today's standards but rather shocking for its day. The character of Christiane is mesmerizing.
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MCT:April 3, 2008
An atmosphere of dread and sinister obsession with sudden moments of graphic violence. One of the horrors is watching the surgical procedures in their entirety in a staged and detached fashion. A bit slow at first, but art-house sensibility and horror were key ingredients to make it a favorite.
A bonus on the dvd from Franju is a darkly comic documentary based on slaughterhouses that's not suited for vegetarians.
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MCT:February 2, 2008
One more gem to put on my "fascinating-french-fiction"-list! Made in the 60´s this film manages to be scary, beautiful, socially conscious and foresighted at the same time (theres even an animal right-theme in the ending...) Extremely interesting photo angles and beautifully sharp black and white contrasts.
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MCT:December 18, 2007
i don't say this lightly...
one of the most disturbing movies i've ever seen. great pacing, great story, great camera work. a score that though at times inappropriate is incredibly catchy. see this one. -
MCT:December 6, 2007
A pretty nightmare with a really great and dark atmosphere, this cult film become in a great inspiration for a lot of future horror and suspense films.
Another important thing is the characters itself, everyone had as principal motivation the love for another person, and this make they do horrible things. -
MCT:August 22, 2007
More proof to me that old horror films are the best, and that they don't even have to be in the language you speak to scare.
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MCT:August 16, 2007A plastic surgeon responsible for disfiguring his daughter because of reckless driving attempts to give her a new face by grafting on those of young women he kills. sick sick !
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MCT:August 10, 2007it sounds intriguing enough but for me it turned out quite the opposite...perhaps it hasnt aged well...its has terrible pacing and is filled with one dimensional characters...its a good concept plagued by poor execution
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MCT:August 8, 2007
Great suspense and storytelling. Horrifying face transplant scene. Ironically, this pic takes place in France, and France is the first country to do a successful face transplant. Coincidence?
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MCT:July 25, 2007
original, dark, and fun french thriller, written by the same duo who made possible Hitchcock's Vertigo and Clouzot's Diaboliques
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MCT:July 17, 2007
Eyes Without a Face (1959), which was dubbed in English and released as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, is a dreamy and surreal black-and-white film with sparkling visual clarity and haunting imagery. The story is of a beautiful young girl who has lost her face in a car accident caused by her domineering father. Her father is also a brilliant surgeon and willing to go to any lengths to set right what he has ruined so he begins kidnapping young girls to steal their faces and graft them on to his daughter's.
Despite the lack of blood (in an interview, Franju comments that he could not have blood so that the film would pass the French censors, could not have torture of animals so that he would pass English censors, and could not have a mad doctor so that he would pass German censors (who were still quite sensitive about Mengele-like topics so soon after WWII) the surgery scenes are chilling yet mesmerizing. We know that the doctor is lifting a latex mask, not the girl's actual face, but the movie is so dream-like and enchanting that we are willing to agree that he is peeling away the very identity of a human in order to bestow it upon his daughter.
His daughter is the most poignant victim in all of this. She does not want to destroy other girls so that she can have a face again. In fact, she asks to be allowed to quietly die instead. Her face, when we see it, is filled with a deep sorrow that manages to project beyond the emotionless mask she wears throughout most of the movie. She is a gentle and haunted soul, floating waif-like about the doctor's opulent villa. She is an elegant creature of pure sorrow and twisted beauty.
While Eyes Without a Face has some pacing problems and I'm ambivalent about the carnival-like score, it certainly deserves its status as a classic of cinema. Many express the belief that this film has been overlooked too often and I would have to agree. I only heard of its existence this year. But I believe the film should be listed as one of the greats and should be more well-known, especially among fans of older art films. I do agree with those who say that Eyes Without a Face should rank with Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast for its visual qualities and fairy-tale storytelling ... except that the fairy tale in Eyes Without a Face is a tale with as much sorrow as Cocteau's tale has joy.
The Criterion disc includes another short film by Georges Franju that I will review here as well:
Blood of the Beasts is a short documentary, about twenty minutes long. While I have seen other reviewers refer to this film as "surreal," I would be more inclined to categorize it as "hyperreal."
The subject is the slaughterhouses of Paris at the time of production (1949) and the topic is treated with a gentleness and honesty that stand strongly juxtaposed against the graphic nature of the images depicted.
Franju begins the film by showing us the edges of Paris. At that time, the gates of Paris opened onto empty countryside and we see a makeshift flea market with strange and wonderful goods for sale. We see children playing Ring of Rosies against a foreground of broken springs. We see lovers strolling and kissing and a great happiness out on the edge of town.
Then the narration moves toward the city and the industrial section there on its edge. We visit several slaughterhouses and, other than the sterility of the black-and-white film, we are spared nothing in watching the animals die. Sensitive viewers will not want to approach this film at all and the rest of us will likely feel a twinge of sadness as we watch beautiful animals become food.
Yet simultaneously, one is pulled in by the efficiency of the workers and the fascinating process by which a neighing or bleating creature on four legs becomes a cutlet. The workers do not betray any emotions, whether of regret or even boredom. They are workers doing their job, just as any other, yet instead of fastening bolts or adding columns of numbers they are butchering animals.
The narrator admires the workers and mentions several times how dangerous their work is. We see a butcher with a peg leg because he once cut a femoral artery while skinning a horse and his leg had to be amputated. We see a young man working with a knife so sharp it can cut a cow's leg off as if it were made of butter and are forced to marvel at the risk he takes every day, casually swinging that knife around.
While the film is difficult to watch, it is also beautiful in a very real way. It is the beauty of honesty and anyone who ever puts meat on his plate over the course of a week can cringe from the sights but if he wishes to be as honest as the film, he must admit that it is his own appetite that swings the poleaxe, that pulls the trigger on the bolt gun, that wields the scalpel-sharp knives.
At the end, the movie returns to the pastoral setting of the edges of Paris and we finish with the image of a barge navigating the canal, filmed from an angle so low the boat seems to be cutting a swath through the grassy field itself. Our breathtaking and sometimes painful journey through the places that feed us -- or I should say that fed us as butchering is a much different prospect these days -- has come to an end.
I watched a brief interview in which Franju discusses his intent in making this brutal yet hauntingly beautiful film. He explained that he intentionally did not film it in color because he wanted to pull the viewer in, not push them away with repugnance. In color, the stark and strange beauty would have become nothing less than repulsive. Franju realized that he wanted the film to be beautiful but his sense of beauty is a sense of truth, not of loveliness. He was seeking an honesty toward his subject that, I feel, he did achieve. As for sandwiching the horrors of the slaughterhouse with the loveliness of a sunny day on the outskirts of Paris? He felt that an object is not fully realized until we can place it in its setting and that the setting itself de-objectifies the object and helps lead us to a fuller truth.
This is definitely not a film for everyone. I would go so far as to say it is a film that only a select few will truly appreciate. But those who can appreciate the life-giving death and the calm assuredness of the men who bring this sustaining flesh to us will come away from the film with a deep sense of awe and wonder. If you have the stomach and sinew to watch where your meat comes from, this film will show you with honesty, respect, and a transcendant beauty. -
MCT:June 22, 2007Devotion, compassion, and vanity take a turn for the ugly in this dreamily shot French gross-out thriller that proves a villain is only scarier when sympathetic.
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MCT:June 16, 2007
Rongé par les remords, un chirurgien kidnappe des jeunes filles et retire leurs visages afin de tenter de les greffer à sa fille affreusement défigurée par sa faute. Voilà un film que je n'oublierai pas de sitôt. Il est à la fois beau et hideux, poétique et effrayant. Son réalisme est déchirant et vient chercher le spectateur dans ses trippes. On est pris à la fois de pitié et de répugnance pour cette jeune femme forcée de porter un masque d'une blancheur immaculée pour voiler sa laideur. Certaines images s'imprègnent dans la mémoire et sont difficiles à chasser. La réalisation et la photographie sont superbes. Un film déroutant, qui effraie réellement et qui ne laissera personne indifférent.
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MCT:June 12, 2007
in the spirit of edgar allen poe. heads and shoulders above american 'b' horror movies of the time.
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MCT:May 16, 2007
Amazing, poetic, French horror film. This has been ripped off so many times (quite a few by Jess Franco) that the story might sound familiar but don't be put off.
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MCT:April 29, 2007
Stark, surreal and almost poetically beautiful, Eyes Without a Face is likely to be the most unique film I've seen in a very long time. The visual composition surges with grace, right down to every last detail, and it all feels summarized by that bizarre mask that Christiane wears. A perfect face hiding something truly horrible.
This film made me feel many ways - touched, curious, horrified, darkly amused, nervous, shocked, sad. It is both human and inhuman at the same time, striving desperately to lend dignity to the barbaric practices that the doctor runs through. It is hard to find a clear villain, and when the film finishes you're left unsure as to where your allegiances lie. Eyes Without a Face is clearly-written and structured extremely well, but it is not immune to ambiguity. Fortunately, it only adds to the mystery of the film, rather than detracting from it.
The movie can't help but fall victim to the problems inherent in any 50-year-old horror movie, but it is still extraordinarily crafted. See this. -
MCT:April 17, 2007
Eyes Without a Face definitely takes a while to get going but it's worth it. Whoever did the lighting for the first act needs to get new glasses. The surgery scene came off as a bit contrived, but if you watch the interview with Franju in the special features it makes sense. It wasn't really made clear who was the crazy one at the end but either way the final scene is so incredibly haunting you don't really care.
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