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Really Surprised!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This is the provenance of Edith Scob's iconic image as the girl-with-a-white-mask, to whom Leos Carax pays the homage 52 years later in HOLY MOTORS, by asking Scob to put on the expressionless prop once again in his recondite omnibus. And Ms. Scob has a most otherworldly countenance, which firstly absorbs us through Christiane's glinting eyes, a young girl whose face is savagely disfigured during a car accident caused by her father, a renowned surgeon Doctor Génessier (Brasseur), thus, his road to redemption will course through a grisly and amoral route to a bitter end. A forefather of Gothic and body horror, EYES WITHOUT A FACE is French filmmaker Georges Franju's pièce de résistence, but in the eyes of a less squeamish viewer, its scary quotient isn't that high, the hyped face skin-removing surgery set piece is a greatly concocted legerdemain, but the helping hand of its make-up team is unmissable to notice, also the gore is roundly sanitized and the only really startling moment is when Christiane reveals her skeletal visage in a jiffy during an oneiric sequence precipitating the scream of one of the hapless victims Edna Grüber (Mayniel), elsewhere, the film holds together a taut yet uncanny overtone in solemn company with its formulaic plot-device, which incorporates sundry narrative hiccups, such as Edna's demise, is it a slip of foot or a suicidal boldness? Or, the seemingly odd situation where Christiane is left sober when her father begins the operation near the climax, since in the last round, she is also put into sleep during the process. After all, it is an ensorcelling Grand Guignol festooned with copious visual niceties and emotional restraint (from Brasseur's impassive but authorial culprit to Alida Valli's visibly disturbed but nonetheless stalwart accomplice), plus a mesmeric score from Maurice Jarre, also it is a rewarding coup de maître that poetic justice arrives in the hand of Christiane's ethical awakening instead of the inept police investigation, a masked angel descends with a dove in her hand, indeed poeticism can germinate from something heinously reprehensible.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE is widely considered to be one of the landmarks of horror cinema, helping to usher in a new wave of grisly, physical horror movies in the 1960s. Seen today it's a good companion piece to LES DIABOLIQUES, going for a gutsy, visceral approach rather than a psychological thriller style, although it still has plenty of character depth. The simple storyline, about a deranged surgeon trying to graft a new face onto his disfigured daughter, has proved hugely influential even to this day.The film benefits from strong direction which delivers a chilly atmosphere to the proceedings. There's no faulting the acting either, but really it's the script that makes this work; the story plays out in a cold, dispassionate way that links nicely with the events on the screen. Even today, the surgical scenes are shockingly graphic and disturbing, and really pack a punch. The film is a slow burner that builds to a Grand Guignol-style climax that works a treat.

I think this is less horror than it is a drama of existential anguish in which horrifying things happen; all of the characters in some way are struggling to hold together or discover a certain reality and the truthfulness of what is happening, with little to no result. Doctor Génessier, the father who has grievously wounded his daughter in a car accident and desperately seeks to repair his daughter's face is a brilliant play on the 'mad scientist' archetype: he has a realised goal to which all of his energy is channelled, but he doesn't flail around with typical melodramatic ambition. His eyes are haunted and distant, and when he communicates with the outside world it is often brief philosophical responses. In all his preoccupation he seems to exist restlessly in a purgatory. But this purgatory is beautiful though; a subdued monochrome world built on fairly quiet visuals that are sharply punctuated by moments of horror which are surprisingly gruesome for 1960.One of the most disturbing scenes in the film comes at a moment when the Doctor presents a slideshow charting the gradual failure of a skin graft operation. We see pictures of his daughter's face as the body slowly rejects it and it becomes more deformed, and we wonder what he is willing to do to achieve success, and how much she has to suffer in its pursuit. There are moral ambiguities here, but his goal is not as unreasonable as it is his methods. He coldly buries someone's daughter under the pretence that it is his own, he ensnares young women in his house, and he keeps dogs and birds locked away somewhere in his cellar like a fairy-tale villain, the said dogs cruelly confined in these odd, almost space-age pens. But the ultimate emotional pain comes from his daughter, Christiane, who is the final victim of all this, as she to carry the weight of everything her father does, which is supposedly for her. Her introduction is marvellous, using the striking mise-en-scene and confusing spatiality of the mansion to great surreal effect. It reminded me of The Shining, which uses a similar effect in the geographical discrepancies of the Hotel to maintain a sense of isolation and discomfort. We follow Doctor Génessier as he arrives in the dark, obscured cellar of the mansion, his arrival greeted only by the endless barking and howling of the dogs. He then slowly begins to ascend through the levels of the house; at first quite foreboding with the high windows and cage-like chandelier, and then quite comforting in the final floor of the house, which is soft and serene with its white corridors and crackling fireplace. This is almost a hell to heaven transition, but Christiane's situation is too painful for this to be heavenly. She is locked away like a princess in a tower, and her rescue is not imminent. One of the most singularly beautiful and yet haunting images is the mask she wears to disguise her face. This is a testament to the ability of Edith Scob who has to convey almost entirely through the eyes, the striking emotion of which is painfully juxtaposed against the inhuman stillness of the mask. I wonder how Keanu Reeves would emote if he were to wear a mask like this. When she calls her fiancé (who is believes she is dead) but cannot bring herself to speak is now probably the single greatest silent phone call I've seen, which is refreshing because the call-but-not-a-call can be an insufferable cliché sometimes. I wish the two Policemen had been given a little more development. There was perhaps a little comedy that could have been found in the veteran/rookie pairing, which could have lightened the load of all the melancholy, if only briefly, but if not that just a little more character to heighten the dramatic value of their investigation a little more. I look to The Exorcist for an interesting secondary story, in which the Policeman character creates a conflict between our need to see him succeed or escape harm and our interests in their MacNeil family and their wellbeing. The eventual plan of the Police in order to ascertain the guilt of Génessier felt a little weak though, as they use a decoy to try and prove their suspicions, yet don't do anything to make sure they are nearby and could intervene if her safety is compromised. But maybe that's just a misguided attempt at trying to suggest 'improvement'. This film is a stunningly poetic look at the longing for identity, a theme which finely presents itself in the characters. Louise, Génessier's assistant, is the only one to have had a successful face transplant, yet despite this sense of self she fails to integrate into society, and instead helps Génessier with his crimes. Her presence is always accompanied by this slightly menacing fairground-esque music, or something echoing a carnival, which is appropriate because she is a freak-show, presenting the dire moral implications of Génessier's pursuit. In the end, Christiane, who like a Snow White, complete with the birds fluttering around her shoulders, is almost beautiful, yet the physical sense of self has not been reconciled with the soul. The eyes are considered windows to the soul, but how much of that soul remains if those eyes are without a face?

Eyes without a Face. The title is not a metaphor. It seems that a crusty old doctor, despondent that his daughter's face is, well, no longer present owing to a terrible car accident, has resorted to kidnapping young women, removing their faces, and grafting the faces onto his daughter. The results are not always optimal.Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) has already successfully grafted skin onto the face of his elder daughter, Louise (Alida Valli), with only a minor scar as evidence. But younger daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) has proved to be a more difficult subject, er, patient. Even when the doctor appears to be successful, Christiane's face begins to deteriorate, to the point where she is relegated to wearing a sculpted mask that completely obscures her marred features. Christiane is both ashamed of her condition and increasingly distressed at the lengths to which her father will go to restore his daughter's beauty.Given the French names of the characters, it's no surprise that this movie is actually in French (with English subtitles). But, as is often the case with well-done cinema, these subtitles do nothing to distract from the drama and horror on screen. And this isn't some cheap melodrama, either - it's a horror treat. Director Georges Franju never truly reveals Christiane's non-face face; she's either wearing her mask or is shown in very, very soft focus. This gets the imagination percolating - just how terrible does she look? We do get a sense of the extent of her injuries when we see Genessier operating on one of his victims, carefully slicing the skin off her face (with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth).In this day and age (more than 50 years after the film was released), it's not hard to imagine a serial killer or similar psychopath performing the same surgeries. We've had bad guys skin their victims and make clothes out of them. We've had cannibals with willing victims. Our imaginations are no match for real life. The barbarism of Eyes without a Face is such that the unscheduled operations do not always result in a sedated slip into the next world but rather a life viewed through scarred, trembling, naked eyes.