AKA: LES YEUX SANS VISAGE
(1959/FRANCE/ITALY)
Reviewed By-Sean Patrick Dolan Director: Georges Franju Cast: Pierre Brasseur (Professor Genessier), Edith Scob (Catherine), Alida Valli (Louise), Francois Guerin (Jacques) Source: Criterion Collection DVD (2004, NTSC R1)
Professor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) is a respected surgeon who is pioneering the field of live human organ transplants. When his daughter Catherine (Edith Scob) is horribly disfigured in a car accident, he feels guilty for having caused it with his aggressive driving. Genessier becomes obsessed with the idea of restoring Catherine to her former beauty. He has no qualms about procuring his "donors" or disposing of their bodies afterwards, enlisting the help of his more reluctant assistant Louise (Alida Valli). Genessier’s passion to restore his daughter’s beauty consumes him, driving him to greater and greater lengths. At the same time, it takes a terrible toll on Catherine. She grows increasingly distraught as her father’s experiments inevitably fail, and the guilt over the young women dying for her sake consumes her. Although the police are gradually closing in on the doctor, following the trail of female corpses to his clinic door, it will ultimately be up to Catherine to free herself- and her father- from the madness and bloodshed consuming their lives.
It is a fairly simple plot, especially to the reader who is quite familiar with the last half century of the horror genre. Yet this belies the fact that EYES WITHOUT A FACE was a truly monumental film in its day, which many (including this writer), consider to be the birth of the modern horror film. In their book, Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984, Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs wrote: "During the 1960's and '70's, the European horror film went totally crazy. It began to go kinky- creating a new type of cinema that blended eroticism and terror. This heady fusion was highly successful, causing a tidal wave of celluloid weirdness that was destined to look even more shocking and irrational when it hit countries like England and the USA." Cathal and Tombs trace the origin of this phenomenon to the French cinema term, the "fantastique". In the "fantastique" film, "linear narrative and logic are always ignored . . . . The pictorial, the excessive and the irrational are the privileged factors. It does have a structure, it’s the structure of a crazy dream. A dream full of potent, frightening and sometimes inexplicable images. With logic and rationality out of the way, the repressed takes the centre stage, and it’s hardly surprising that the other guiding factor inside the "fantastique" film is its predilection towards the erotic." (Tohill and Tombs, 5.)
One of the earliest examples of this emerging genre is Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE. Faced with the daunting task of making a horror movie which showed no blood, no overt sexual content, no animal torture, and no mad scientists- to avoid the wrath of French, US, British, and German censors, respectively- Franju rose to the challenge. As he stated in numerous interviews, Franju hated "fairy tales" and fantasy scenarios and instead found the bizarre and the horrific by pealing back the thin layer of "normality" in everyday life. Dr. Genessier is not a wild-eyed maniac of the FRANKENSTEIN (1931) mode, hell-bent on creating human life from the leftover remains of corpses. His obsession- to restore his daughter’s once beautiful face- is driven by his guilt over having caused the auto accident. He is by all appearances a normal, sane man, but is driven by circumstance to act in terribly cruel and abnormal manner. It is interesting to note that one of the scenes removed from the edited, 1962 US release of the film (THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DR. FAUSTUS) is not one of violence, but of Genessier compassionately treating an injured young girl at his clinic.
It appears that the American censors could not cope with too much humanizing of a "monstrous" figure. Although the doctor is the central character whose actions drive the plot, he is not the focus of the film. Nor are the police and their attempts to solve the disappearances of young women in their district- they are, in fact, given little screen time and ultimately are not the ones to end Genessier‘s reign of terror. The film focuses largely on Catherine, who is twice victimized by her father in the film- first in the auto accident, and then in his attempts to repair her. She is believed to be dead and is completely isolated from the world, unable to do more than call her fiancé Jacques (Francois Guerin) to hear his voice and then quickly hang up. She is further traumatized by her father’s constant unsuccessful attempts at reconstructive surgery and eventually can no longer live with the sacrifices unwitting "donors" are making on her behalf.
Franju had even less of a problem dealing with the restrictions placed on the images he could show than he did in dealing with the plot. Despite the gruesome manner of the surgeries Genessier performs, there is only one scene which can be described as grotesque. In this scene, the doctor removes the face of a victim, first carefully outlining the skin in marker, then cutting with a scalpel, next applying clamps all around the incisions, and finally- slowly- peeling the face away from the skull. However, the camera cuts away before any real gore can be witnessed. EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a horror film with little graphic violence, and I suspect it would be that way even if Franju had been allowed to shock his audience in that manner. Like many of his contemporaries in the world of French cinema, Franju was influenced by the German expressionism of Murnau (NOSFERATU (1922)) and Lang (METROPOLIS (1927)), as well as the surrealism of Bunuel (UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929)). There are moments of the surreal, most notably the manic, comic soundtrack that accompanies scenes that should be fraught with tension- the abduction of and disposal of victims. There are many haunting and beautiful scenes in EYES WITHOUT A FACE in which we see Catherine, her ghostly white mask covering her disfigured face, wandering the labyrinthine halls and spiraling staircases of Genessier’s clinic as if she were truly already lost to this world.
It is hard to put into words how effective, even stunning the actresses’ performance is, but Franju himself does it well: "Fever, yearning, fear, hope . . . . I found all this in the beautiful eyes of Edith Scob. But I was always troubled by them. Troubled in the presence of this young, sweet girl. Because sweetness was an emotion which her face never expressed." (Black, Andy. "Plastic Surgery Disasters: Body Horror in ‘Eyes Without a Face and Faceless’". Necronomicon. Book Three. London: CreationBooks, 1996: 153)Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE had a profound influence on the next generation of European horror directors, most notably Jess Franco and Jean Rollin. Franco’s THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (1961), his first successful film, is an obvious tribute- if not a remake- of EYES. Less in the art-house vein, Franco’s film plays up the campy elements of the old mad scientist films (FRANKENSTEIN; THE CORPSE VANISHES (1942)) , replacing the reluctant assistant Louise with the more traditional henchman- and his most recognizable character- Morpho. He also focuses more on the traditional storyline of by having the police hunt down the fiend terrorizing the local social scene. But the most obvious contribution Franco makes is his upping of the sexual ante, in several blatantly erotic and titillating scenes.
Franco revisited EYES WITHOUT A FACE again later in his career with another loose remake, LES PREDATEURS DE LA NUIT (FACELESS (1988)). In this more modern take on the theme, Franco has abandoned any pretense of innocence among the three main characters- doctor, daughter, and assistant- making no effort to humanize them. Instead, he amps up the gore and the sexuality, accomplishing the latter by introducing to the mix one of his favorite motifs, voyeurism, and an icon of the euro sex and horror genre, Brigitte LaHaie. FACELESS remains Franco’s most commercially successful film to date. The point is that one can clearly see in the progression from EYES WITHOUT A FACE to THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF to FACELESS the continuing transition from an earlier age to the modern age of the European horror film. Perhaps no director has carried forth the tradition of the "fantastique" to the present day more faithfully than the French auteur Jean Rollin. His films unveil themselves in the language and with the logic of dreams, with bizarre, fantastic, and surreal images. It should come as no surprise that Rollin counts EYES WITHOUT A FACE as an important influence. In Rollin‘s own words:"Franju is the author of the greatest film in the genre, Les Yeux Sans Visage. Perfection of the script, of the actors, of the light, of everything. I was haunted during many, many years by the end, Edith Scob walking in the park with her face covered by the white mask, and the white birds and that music . . . I have tried to find that atmosphere of dream, madness, poetry in many of my films. (Black. Andy. "Clocks, Seagulls, Romeo & Juliet: Surrealism Rollin Style". Necronomicon. Book One. London: Noir Publishing, 199: 179).
In many ways, Rollin has stuck to a more traditional path, closer to the origins of the "fantastique" than Franco. While the subject matter in many of Rollin’s films may be more fantasy-oriented than he might be comfortable with, I doubt that Franju would find fault with Rollin’s direction. Rollin’s films are largely devoid of "action", and are sometimes criticized for containing more dialogue than some feel is necessary. But his films are awash with images and symbolism (LE VIOL DU VAMPIRE (1968); LA FIANCEE DE DRACULA 2002)), stark countryside and beach locales (LES RAISINS DE LA MORT (1978)); LA MORTE VIVANTE (1982)), and tragic heroines (TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES (1997)). Often these elements overlap, and almost all of Rollin’s films contain elements of expressionism as well as strong and pervasive erotic content. For all of these reasons, Rollin can be considered a true descendent of Franju and a torch bearer illuminating the shadowy, mysterious realm of the "fantastique".Georges Franju’s LES YEUX SANS VISAGE (EYES WITHOUT A FACE) is a must see for serious fans of the European horror film. It can certainly be enjoyed on its own merits, but will probably appeal most to fans of the aforementioned directors, Franco and Rollin.
I reviewed the 2004 Criterion Collection DVD release of EYES WITHOUT A FACE which is presented in 1.66:1 aspect ratio, with the original French soundtrack and optional English subtitles. Of course, it has the usual extras one would expect- a full chapter index, two theatrical trailers (one for THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DR. FAUSTUS-the edited and dubbed 1962 US release- and one for EYES WITHOUT A FACE- the original French film, subtitled in English), and a stills gallery with rare behind-the-scenes photos and promotional artwork/posters. One interesting series of photos shows and alternate black mask created for but not used by Edith Scob in the film. The liner notes feature two short essays on the film, by David Kalat and Patrick McGrath, respectively.
In addition to this, there are several great archival interviews with director Georges Franju and with writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac- who also wrote Henri-Georges Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock‘s VERTIGO (1958). All of these interviews originally aired on French TV in the 1980’s and 90’s, although some appear to have been filmed much earlier.. I saved the best for last. The bonus extra offered by this DVD is the complete Franju film LE SANG DES BETES (BLOOD OF THE BEASTS (1949)), a short documentary on slaughterhouses in Paris. This documentary is uncompromising in its treatment of its subject matter and, as such, shouldn’t be watched by sensitive viewers. But it is also very artistic and thoughtful- at one point, Franju even quotes the poet Baudelaire. It has its own scene index and is presented in the original French and an optional English soundtrack. There is also an interview with Franju in which he discusses the challenges in creating "cinema of truth" and the benefits of black and white photography.
Story: 5.0 Bitch Slaps Extras: 5.0 Bitch Slaps Picture/Audio: 5.0 Bitch Slaps Overall DVD: 5.0 Bitch Slaps
Bibliography
Black. Andy. "Clocks, Seagulls, Romeo & Juliet: Surrealism Rollin Style". Necronomicon. Book One. London: Noir Publishing, 199: 179.
__________ "Plastic Surgery Disasters: Body Horror in ‘Eyes Without a Face and Faceless’". Necronomicon. Book Three. London: Creation
Books, 1996: 153.
Boileau, Pierre and Thomas Narcejac. Interview. Les Grand-peres du crime. Patrick Thomas, Oct 3 1985 (FR3).
Franju, Georges. Interview. "Franju le visionnaire". Cinema de notre temps. Andre S. Labarthe. Jan 1 1997 (INA).
___________ Interview. "Le "Fantastique". Cine-parade. Jean Douchet, May 20 1982 (FR3).
Kalat, David. "The Unreal Reality". Liner notes in Eyes Without a Face. Criterion, 2004.
McGrath, Patrick. "Appearances to the Contrary: Franju’s Eyes Without a Face". Liner notes in Eyes Without a Face. Criterion, 2004.
Tohill, Cathal and Pete Tombs. Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995: 5.
