☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½
Eyes Without a Face (1960) – G. Franju
Exceedingly
creepy, even gruesome, film (although with really very little blood and gore)
that explores the complicated emotions of a (clearly immoral and possibly mad) doctor
(Pierre Brasseur) who is desperately seeking a breakthrough in skin-grafting technology
to assist him in a face-transplant for his terribly disfigured twenty-something
daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), whose emotions are also explored. With the help
of his nurse-assistant (Alida Valli), herself a recipient of a prior skin-graft
(and therefore indebted to him), the doctor kidnaps young women and surgically removes
their faces for transplanting to his daughter (a procedure that the donor does
not always survive). Between surgeries (which often fail), Christiane wanders
the doctor’s mansion in an expressionless white mask, adding a surreal and
dreamlike quality to the proceedings. Increasing the anxiety level of viewers
(and characters in the film), the doctor keeps a kennel full of dogs for his
experiments in the basement whose constant barking provides a soundtrack (when
Maurice Jarre’s weird circus-like music isn’t playing). But soon, the police are closing in and the
gig is up … or is it? With beautiful and
stark black and white cinematography by Eugen Schüfftan (who won the Oscar for
The Hustler, 1961, the next year), this was the high-water mark for director Georges
Franju (although I also recommend his remake of the silent serial Judex, 1963).
Guaranteed to unsettle.
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