Eyes without a Face [Les yeux sans visage] ***** (1960, Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Edith Scob, Juliette Mayniel) – Classic Movie Review 2414

‘The future, Madame, is something we should have started on a long time ago.’ – Docteur Génessier. Director Georges Franju’s surreal cult classic horror thriller, adapted from the novel written by Jean Redon, is supremely stylish and poetic, an eerie nightmare. Franju described it as a tale of anguish rather than a horror story.

Director Franju is on masterly and Pierre Brasseur kicks up a storm as Docteur Génessier, one of cinema’s mad doctors, a brilliant surgeon who kidnaps and kills nice young women to remove their faces and graft them on to his beloved daughter Christiane (Edith Scob), who has lost her face in a car crash. When all the experiments fail, and the victims die, Génessier keeps trying.

Alida Valli plays Brasseur’s creepy helper Louise, who scours Paris by night to find more victims.

Franju achieves a really weird atmosphere and conjures up a film that’s observant and believable while it chills and amazes.

Also in the cast are François Guérin, Juliette Mayniel and Béarice Altariba. And also notable about the film are Eugen Schüfftan’s cinematography and Maurice Jarre’s score.

Redon, Claude Sautet, and Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Vertigo and Diabolique) all had a hand in the adaptation.

After negative reviews, Franju responded by saying that the film was his attempt to get the minor horror genre taken seriously. In the end, he definitely succeeded, as this went from poor reviews to cult status, then influential film, and finally classic movie.

Seven audience members fainted during the surgery scene when the film was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1960. Franju retorted naughtily: ‘Now I know why Scotsmen wear skirts.’

John Carpenter suggested that the mask that Michael Myers wore in Halloween (1978) was influenced by Scob’s mask in this film. Hubert de Givenchy created the gowns Christiane wears.

It was first released in America in a cut version titled The Horror Chamber of Dr Faustus, even though there’s no Dr Faustus in the film. It was finally re-released uncut and under its original title in American cinemas for the first time on Halloween night 2003.

Billy Idol has a song titled Eyes without a Face on his album Rebel Yell (1983).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2414

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