Eyes Without a Face (1960)


A large portion of the world likes being scared.  This seems to be one thing we all share.  At some point when there were just a few homo sapiens gathered around a fire I am sure they told stories of old Gak who had his arm replaced with a mammoth tusk and terrorized some teenagers making outside of camp when they should have been hunting and gathering.  Everyone enjoys a good scare.

Except, apparently, for the French.  Eyes Without a Face came out square in the middle of the French New Wave, a series of films that guys in the late 1950s and early 1960s pretended to understand to impress their girlfriends.  In contrast Georges Franju's film was pretty straightforward.  Although he nominally was more interested in exploring depression and loss, the framework was that of a typical mad scientist film.  However, Franju's surrealist touches set it aside from normal b-movie fare.  

Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is a brilliant surgeon working in the field of skin grafts and transplants.  His theories are revolutionary, only he has yet to see the results he desires.  His main focus is on his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) who was severely disfigured in a car accident due to her father's carelessness.  Along with his assistant Louise (Alida Valli) Dr. Génessier collects young women who may be suitable donors to use for the transplant.

One such is a Swiss student named Edna (Juliette Mayniel) with whom Christiane interacts, understanding how she feels once one of the surgeries is complete.  However, Edna's disappearance has not gone unnoticed and, though Christiane is thought dead, her fiancée Jacques (François Guérin) starts to suspect Dr. Génessier, his mentor, of keeping secrets from him.  To that end Inspector Parot (Alexandre Rignault) cooks up a plot to use a young shoplifter (Paulette Meroudon) as bait. 

Despite Franju's insistence that Eyes Without a Face was not a shallow genre exercise it does contain one of the more disturbing scenes, and not one that a viewer would expect even from a European film in 1960.  This involves, as much as makeup effects would allow at the time, a full view of Edna having her face removed in preparation for a transplant onto Christiane.  Apparently this scene caused some fainting at the time and it is still stands the test of time.  The truly striking images throughout, though, are Christiane in her mask that hides her disfigurement, particularly a number of the final shots in the film. 

Suffice it to say critics were not amused at the time.  Most French publications thought that Franju wasted his talents with this movie, and one British writer was even fired for going against the prevailing trend at the time and writing a positive review.  Of course, time has seen Eyes Without a Face get its due, being considered not just a classic horror film of the time but one of the peaks of French cinema, both for its atmosphere and inventive filming.  The music, by Maurice Jarré, is one of the things that doesn't work, often sounding like circus music rather than adding to either the suspense or beauty of the images. 

That's a minor quibble as the movie is tightly produced and pretty much sticks to the story, which is an adaptation of the novel by Jean Redon.  That may also be why it wasn't received too kindly, as it was just the sort of literary adaptation that Truffaut and Godard and much of the French cinema press was against.  Despite that Franju still came up with quite a bit of striking and iconic imagery to elevate the film.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Time: 90 minutes
Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli 
Director: Georges Franju

 

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