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“Night brings terror. Strange, alien forms move restlessly across the face of the earth. Fear, horror and death follow in their wake. The sky is dark; the moon has not yet risen; the stars seem too frightened to shine ..." --- Drake Douglas (introduction to Horrors)

Horrorphile - August 2007

Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face)

August 20th 2007 02:22
Les Yeux Sans Visage movie poster
Near Paris, an older woman dumps a young woman’s body into the waters of a lake. It is revealed she is the assistant to a brilliant surgeon, Dr. Génessier. His own daughter Christiane is house-bound, as a result of the facial injuries suffered in an horrific car crash. As Génessier was the driver he feels responsible for ruining his pretty daughter’s life and so is obsessed with rectifying the situation.

With the help of his dedicated assistant Louise, the doctor has attractive young women kidnapped, then surgically he removes their faces, and with his newfangled grafting procedure he attempts to fit his beloved daughter Christiane with a beautiful new face. Each time the operation fails, the victims die, and Christiane falls back into despair … but Génessier is determined.

Les Yeux Sans Visage Edith Scob
Edith Scob as Christiane
Director Georges Franju’s art-horror is poetry and grotesquerie combined in a quietly disturbing tale of madness and obsession, morality and corruption. Made in 1959, Les Yeux Sans Visage is a most unusual “mainstream” movie. It pulls from other sources yet feels distinctly original. Despite its lurid and macabre thematic elements the movie plays out like a carefully constructed dramatic thriller, staged almost like theatre, yet distinctly cinematic.
Les Yeux Sans Visage Alidi Valli
Alidi Valli as Louise
For its time this must have been seen as a thoroughly grim and at times quite surreal movie that doesn’t always feel like a horror, but hardly plays by the rules of any other genre. The black and white cinematography adds a luminescence to the film’s dark sociology. The movie’s original score by Maurcie Jarre is another intriguing element; playfully juxtaposing the film’s strange dream-like qualities with an almost carnival style music.

Les Yeux Sans Visage victim
Seeing the eyes without a face!
Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is not your typical mad scientist. He’s a respected doctor who gives lectures on the progression and implementation of new methods in plastic surgery and skin grafting. It is his assistant, Louise (the legendary Alida Valli), who commands a consistent level of sinister intrigue. Yet both these characters are neither threatening in appearance nor outwardly malevolent. It is the evil beneath the surface, behind the mask of acceptable behaviour, the façade of good.

Christiane (Edith Scob) floats around the home estate in an apparent serene stupor. The mask she wears is a pristine white face-hugger, her large expressive eyes peering out in a forlorn gaze, her dark fringe embracing the mask’s edges awkwardly. It is a haunting visage and it is the image which lingers in the viewer’s mind long after the film's final beautiful images fade.
Les Yeux Sans Visage surgery
Dr Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), Louise and victim

Les Yeux Sans Visage bandages
Trapped, desperate for freedom
Eyes Without a Face uses one of the most appalling injuries a human can suffer (total irreparable facial damage) and its immediate psychological effects on the victim, and those around them. The scene where Christiane approaches one of the victim’s in her father’s operating room without her mask on is brilliantly directed in what the audience does and does not see of Christiane’s faceless face, cleverly working the age old adage of suggestion over explicit illustration.

Les Yeux Sans Visage dog
Christiane and an eventual accomplice
Christiane’s eventual control over her destiny is a powerful final act, and one to be recognized in the horror genre as a masterful conceit over the latter conventions and trappings of slasher flicks. Christiane’s moral ambiguity is what elevates Eyes Without a Face beyond the guise of its alluding confines.
Les Yeux Sans Visage birdcage
Christiane's final empathy
As furiously as I defend cult movies from being remade, and as great as the original is, I would love to see an intelligent remake of this movie transplanting it into the 21st century. David Cronenberg would be a superb candidate for director, with Anthony Hopkins as the doctor (probably a little long in the tooth for the part now), Anne Heche as Louise, and Audrey Tautou as Christiane.

Here is the delicate surgery scene:


"This isn't a chapel to St. John the Baptist, patron saint of butchers, nor his gentle lamb. It's the auction block of the slaughterhouse ..."

As an extra on the Umbrella DVD release is Georges Franju's powerful document of a Parisian slaughterhouse, Blood of the Beasts. Filmed in 1949, this twenty-minute film is an astonishing revelation. It is also irreputably ghastly (thank God it's only in black and white!). The killing tools the men use to execute the job are frightening. One can only imagine the appalling stench that would accompany a job such as working in an abbatoir. A horse, cows, calves, lambs ... all in a day's work.

Juxtaposed with the images within the slaughterhouse are a series of stunningly composed images of industrial Paris, with sporadic narration, including these words from French writer Baudelaire: "I shall strike you without anger and without hate, like a butcher ... with the simple cheerlessness of a killer who whistles or sings as they slit throats, for they must earn their own daily bread, and that of others, with the wages of a difficult and often dangerous profession."

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews
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7 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Chic Critique

August 20th 2007 03:29
Love this post - so well written Bryn, really, I'm blown away.

I might have to see if I can have a look at that one....sounds kind of pre-Hitchcock with it's psychology (?). I love the promo poster too.....

Cheers
CC


Comment by Damo

August 20th 2007 05:58


For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
I have alwsys wanted to see this film.

Maurice Jarre music?
He did Lawrence of Arabia.
Also the he is the estranged father of Jean Michelle Jarre.

I am a big fan of B/W horror.

I fear that a modern director would ham it up and show too much splatter

Comment by Bryn

August 20th 2007 05:59


Horrorphile
Chic, why thank you very much! Dr. What video store in Bondi Junction might be a good place to start ...

Comment by Bryn

August 20th 2007 07:00


Horrorphile
Damo,
I'm a huge fan of Jean-Michel!
True a modern director might resort to splatter, but I reckon the right director could do the film justice.

Comment by JohnDoe

August 20th 2007 21:57


Film & TV on DVD
Shame I had to leave before the notorious surgery scene, (Damn public transport). What I did see of the film looked great, one I will be grabbing of your for sure.


Great review Bryn.

Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner

August 20th 2007 22:55
Bryn,

this was a film that truly creeped me out, but in a good way!

As for a slaughterhouse? Yeah, they are horrible, inhumane and reek of the stench of blood, terror and feces...

Not something I would advise even a seasoned horror fan to visit...

But I stayed for the surgery scene, so John? It's a good thing you didn't!

Terrific review Bryn, well done...

Take care,

Nick

Comment by Bryn

August 21st 2007 00:25


Horrorphile
hey Nick,
cheers for that ...
Yeah, horrorphile that I am, I'm not sure I could handle witnessing an abbatoir in the flesh, so to speak ...

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