Les yeux sans visage

At the time 'Les yeux sans visage' was released, the film was not very popular and faced common rejection by the critics. Regardless of those dis-affirmations, it raised to the position of a classic in the horror genre. Franju - one of the founders of the legendary Cinemathèque Française - succeeded in an intriguing way to make film history sensible as a source of inspiration of an entirely peculiar vision.

The clinic of Dr. Génessier (P. Brasseur) is located not very far from Paris. Famous as a specialist in skin grafting, nobody foreshadows that the scientific ambition of the surgeon is incident with a horrifying secret: Since an accident has destroyed the face of Génessier's daughter, Christiane (Scob), the doctor does everything to reconstruct her beauty. With the help of his assistant Louise (Valli) he clucks young women in his remote mansion, benumbs them and makes them a victim of a macabre surgical operation. In a hidden operating room in the basement of his house, Génessier removes the facial skin and transplants it on Christiane's face. Without lasting successes.

That Franjus film has not suffer losses from its immensely disturbing effects is because of, if nothing else, the camera work of Eugen Schüfftans. His brilliant black and white shots resurrects the bright dark of the expressionist German silent film. It imparts Villa Génessier a threatening life of it's own, transmutes it in a mazy horror house which seems like one can not escape. The shadows of the stairway handrails lay on everybody who enters the building like grids and makes him optically a prisoner of Génessier's delusion, mostly his daughter Christiane. Cut from a real life she haunts through the paternal ruins, the garbled face concealed behind a white porcelain mask, whose sad expression seems to nail the doom of the young woman.

Christiane's mask also points out a central principle of formation of the film: It's suspense results substantially from the interaction of visible and invisible things, of showing and dissembling. Franju subtly creates a nightmarish atmosphere that evokes the horror of Génessier's actions, but never makes it explicitly in the first instance - only to show it the viewer more pitilessly: When the surgeon unprovided cuts into the juvenilely beautiful face of one of his victims. This moment of shocking intensity reminds of the razor blade cut through the woman's eye of Bunuel's surrealistic classic 'Un chien andalou' (1929). With the same zest to provoke, Franju also presents the result of an ostensibly succeeded operation: A sober sequence of photographs shows, commented by Génessier off-stage, at first Christiane's angelically delicate face, then how the transplanted skin becomes patchy a few days later, splits open and two weeks later dies off. The cruelty of those two sequences exposes Génessier as a perverted, pestilent doctor and his paternal love as brutal obsession. The attempt to give his daughter a new face means at the same time to erase her identity, to create the ideal woman.

'Les yeux sans visage' remains in the memory of the viewer as one of the rare places on the imaginary continent, phantasmagoric and exigent with ample suspense and shocking details, a perfect alchemy of horror and allegoric poesy whereby one of the most beautiful horror films came into being.

This film is dark and somber with a spare, eerie music score that suits perfectly the macabre, surreal story. A brilliant but deranged surgeon, having caused his daughter's disfigurement in a car accident, loses touch with reality and tries to restore her beauty in a most repulsive manner. Undeterred by failure, the mad doctor continues his gruesome work, hoping to find a miracle cure that will reconstruct the girl's facial features and also relieve him of his tremendous burden of guilt. The once-lovely girl realizes that she will never enjoy a normal life or see her beloved fiancé again, and her mute telephone calls to him just to hear his voice show how empty and lonely her life has become. There are some scenes that are horribly graphic but quite well done and a few moments that are poignant and touching amid the cruelty and butchery of the movie's central theme. Each character in this grim, unhappy feature is victimized in some fashion, but in spite of its subject matter, this cult classic is lean, first-rate storytelling.

Though EYES WITHOUT A FACE is indeed a horror film, it is also a dark tragedy. Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) and his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob) were involved in a terrible accident, leaving Christiane in the condition suggested by the title. Now, her father is driven to fix what he has done. He is aided by his faithful cohort, Louise (Alida Valli), who lures women to their fate.

Through hideous trial and error, involving several unwary, female "subjects", Genessier is willing to destroy others in order to restore his daughter's beauty. What he really seeks is redemption, and relief from his own feeling of unfathomable guilt. His obsession to restore what he has broken makes him oblivious to all else. For Genessier, the end truly does justify the means.

For her part, Christiane is a virtual prisoner in their enormous house, doomed to wear a doll-like mask, and wander about like a ghost. Not so surprisingly, this all leads to a catastrophic conclusion. This film shocked audiences and inspired a generation of filmmakers. It holds up solidly to this day...

Georges Franju's version of a mad scientist trying to play God tells about a brilliant but controlling and obsessive doctor who is trying to restore the face of his own beloved daughter that was horribly disfigured in a car accident caused by his reckless driving. He requires tissues of recently deceased young women that look like his daughter and he is not going to wait for them to die in an accident - he creates the accidents with help of his loyal secretary/nurse/lover/former patient Louise (Alida Valli of "The Third Man") who kidnaps the unsuspecting girls and brings them to the secluded mansion in one of Paris's suburbs where Doctor Génessier is ready to perform the fascinating and horrifying surgeries.

"Eyes without a Face" is a very impressive, classy picture that has inspired many later horror movies. The music by Maurice Jarr adds to the uneasy and creepy atmosphere - it makes you feel like on the never-stopping ominous merry-go-round and you can't get off it.

George Franju's "Yeux Sans Visage" is extremely slow yet absolutely riveting. The direction is masterful and Pierre Brasseur is superb as the dedicated doctor whose love for his daughter leads him to commit unspeakable crimes.

The cold, sinister atmosphere of the film will seep into your bones and you may find it hard to look at the screen when the central skin-removal operation takes place - this is an extraordinarily grisly sequence for its time, lent all the more power by the cold, matter-of-fact direction and acting.

In a film full of haunting images, you will find the last one unforgettable.

Why can't modern directors make horror films as good as this? It deals with a potentially lurid, gory subject-matter with masterly subtlety and skill.