Eyes Without a Face

Star Review

A masterpiece of ‘poetic horror’ – Gilbert Adair said it was “what one imagines Cocteau's nightmares to be like” – Eyes without a Face was reviled on release but has been reclaimed as a unique fusion of pulp fiction and ethereal beauty.

Living in the attic and drifting through the corridors of Dr Genessier’s clinic is his daughter Christiane, hidden from view since her father’s car accident destroyed her face. Her father uses his assistant – Alida Valli as his honey-voiced procuress – to lure a succession of pretty young girls from Paris to his country hospital, where, drugged and strapped down in his underground operating theatre, they are relieved of their facial skin in the hope that this time, finally, Christiane’s face will accept the graft.

The critics at the time really didn't know what to make of it and responded with dismissive condescension; Sight and Sound said it was 'no more than nauseating'. Their bewilderment was perhaps understandable. After all, this was a film directed by Georges Franju, a founder of the Cinemathèque Française. It was co-scripted by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who has also provided the source material for Clouzot's Les Diaboliques and Hitchcock's Vertigo); it was filmed by the innovative cinematographer Eugen Shuftan (who had conceived special effects for Lang's Metropolis and Gance's Napoléon among others), and featured heavyweight leads in the form of Pierre Brasseur and Alida Valli. And what had this astounding combination of talent produced? Something that seemed to resemble a 1930s gothic horror movie from Universal Studios, but one in which nothing quite fitted. The supposedly deranged surgeon was calm, controlled and even remorseful. For such a bloody subject, there was practically none of the stuff – though its central surgery scene may still cause sensitive viewers to avert their eyes. Maurice Jarre's barrel-organ score adds a tone of sinister comedy, while the police investigation into the missing girls confounds traditional narrative sense and simply peters out. Anticipating audience confusion, the American distributors opted for a hatchet job, cutting it, dubbing it and giving it the preposterous title of The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.

Happily, the film’s original aura of trancelike beauty now awaits you uncut – unlike Dr Genessier’s unfortunate victims.

Graeme Hobbs on 31st March 2008

View all 230 of Graeme Hobbs’s reviews

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Film Description

Guilt-ridden after recklessly crashing his car and leaving his daughter severely disfigured, celebrated plastic surgeon Dr Gennesier becomes obsessed with restoring her beauty by transplanting a new face onto her mutilated features. Aided by his devoted assistant Louisa, young women are lured back to his home to become unwitting donors for his horrific procedures.

Georges Franju fuses Cocteauesque poetry with Cronenbergian body horror to create something quite unique here. The plot about women being kidnapped to provide material for face transplants is the purest pulp, but Franju, assisted by writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Les Diaboliques, Vertigo), and innovative cinematographer Eugene Schufftan (Metropolis) creates film poetry from horror.

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Franju's controversial masterpiece (which brilliantly combines poetry and horror – notably so in this uncut print) is, of course, adapted from Jean Redon's novel by th... more >

Franju's controversial masterpiece (which brilliantly combines poetry and horror – notably so in this uncut print) is, of course, adapted from Jean Redon's novel by the redoubtable team of Boileau and Narcejac. And while the writers of Vertigo (D’Entre les Morts) and Les Diaboliques suffer from a degree of neglect, this is a reminder of their sheer professionalism (usually overlooked here in favour of Franju's coruscating talent). < less

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DVD Extras

• Georges Franju: Visionary (50 minute feature).

Film Details

Cast

Alida Valli, Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Francois Guerin

Technical Details