EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
"Eyes Without a Face" begins with a calliope-infused musical score by famed composer Maurice Jarre set against images of the woods in some unnamed road. We see a woman driving with another body sitting upright in the backseat. The driver dumps the body, that of a girl, in a river. We learn the body was of a kidnapped woman left for dead. Apparently, the woman is Professor Genessier's (Pierre Brasseur) daughter, a reputable Parisian doctor. Genessier seems less
than perturbed by the incident considering the corpse is not his real daughter.
His actual daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), is tucked away in the second floor of his house, wearing a white mask that covers severe scars (she was in a horrible accident that left her disfigured). The Professor wants to reconstruct her face by grafting similar facial skin from the kidnapped victims. The Professor's assistant and secretary, Louise (Alida Valli), is in charge of the kidnappings. Her modus operandi is to lure college women who look like Christiane to her Parisian mansion for a room rental. The victims are put to sleep and then operated on by removing their facial skins. One scene that is guaranteed to make you squirm shows the actual procedure, though it often cuts away to the Professor's sweating forehead. You'll definitely sweat bullets after watching it.
"Eyes Without a Face" is stunningly directed by French director Georges Franju, opting for minimalism rather than the easy route of shocking and disgusting the viewer. This is not a gorefest akin to "Blood Feast" or any of the lurid schlocky, shock films from the early 1960's. In pristinely beautiful black-and-white, Franju transforms shock into art by alluding to the horror rather than presenting it in living color. The shadows, the operating table, the cavernous room of caged dogs, the nocturnal forest, the delicately refined rooms of the mansion are all ingredients of superb atmospheric detail - even two sequences at a cemetery make the heart palpitate. This is the kind of horror movie where horror is omnipresent, even in a Parisian city street where no female student is safe. But there is a certain kind of beauty from an extended sequence where Christiane walks from her room to another, dressed in a gown with her luminescent white mask, as she stares at a portrait of herself with doves. Moments like this show that Franju was interested in the peaceful quiet of a woman who has not forgotten how to feel - we get the impression that her appearance is not as important to her as her father thinks.
"Eyes Without a Face" is one of those sleepers that should have received a better reception abroad (in America, it was retitled "Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus," as erroneous a title as you can imagine). It is decidedly European horror that will keep your stomach tied in knots and your heart beating at an alarming rate - and a sweaty forehead, of course.
