Eyes Without a Face (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Yes, the Billy Idol song was named after this film. Oddly, neither White Wedding nor Rebel Yell seem to have been used as the titles for feature films, even the lazy, cheap, straight to video kind. So we don't need to be distracted by that any more.A woman driving the first of several Citroens dumps a body into a river at night. Surgeon Dr Genessier gives a lecture about heterograft transplants, to an audience of non-specialists who seem absorbed by his account of how heavy irradiation can prevent transplant rejection. The tone is somewhere between the lecture delivered by Gene Wilder at the start of Young Frankenstein, and the exposition from the transplant team at the Keloid Clinic at the start of Cronenberg's Rabid. Genessier is called by the police to identify a body, which he declares is that of his daughter Christiane, even though the father of another missing girl arrives ready to claim his own daughter. In fact, Christiane lives in her father's chateau, her face horribly disfigured after a car accident, and Dr Genessier is kidnapping young women to steal their faces to replace Christiane's.EWAF aims to give equal weight to its fairytale and horror aspects, and largely succeeds. Edith Scob plays Christiane beneath a mannequin's mask, with perfect nose and delicately parted lips, through which only her incredibly widely-set eyes can be seen. She is dressed like a 19th century porcelain doll. The effect is to create a tentative alien or curious ghost, tiptoeing down corridors, until her actions take a more decisive turn. She is an imprisoned princess, whose father is trying to turn her into a simulacrum of herself.Dr Genessier's guilt at ruining Christiane's face - he drove the car in which she was injured - is implied, but his stronger motivation seems to be pursuit of his technique, or his art. He keeps a pack of stray dogs caged in his operating suite-cum-dungeon, to use for surgical experiments. Louise (Alida Valli), who procures his girls and disposes of their bodies, is bound to him because he repaired her face, the scar concealed beneath the pearl choker she always wears.Director Franju doesn't spare the bloodletting, in ways that seem shockingly frank for 1960. The centrepiece of the film shows him removing a woman's face to give to Christiane, and the black and white image is all that distinguishes this from the prurient gore of something like Nip/Tuck. Nothing is simply suggested, and the scene ends only when the entire face is lifted off, leaving a bloodied wound below. Later stabbings and the aftermath of other attacks are also depicted with careful attention. The DVD contains Franju's 1949 documentary Blood of the Beasts, which juxtaposes children playing and lovers smooching with scenes at an abattoir in which a horse is killed, bled (the blood literally steams - it's not just a literary convention) and flayed, so it's not as if he was some jobbing director who happened to take on a project that involved bloodletting and skinning: he was clearly deeply into this stuff.The other plot elements are perfunctory. The police have a particularly French world-weariness, but are ineffectual, and Christiane's fiancé is thinly sketched, so his grief at her reported death doesn't register. The failed police investigation into the missing girls proceeds dully for what feels like the last third of the film. Most reviews of the film plead the half-century statute of limitations in revealing exactly what happens at the climax, which robbed it of its power for me; I can't tell how impressive the much-discussed final images truly are.I can't resist film taxonomy, so where does this fit? The other two horror films famously released in 1960, Psycho and Peeping Tom, attracted dismay at their gruesomeness (implied, in both) and purported amorality, but they were kids' stuff compared with this in terms of gore, so I can only presume that English-language critics didn't see it. The fairytale elements follow the work of Jean Cocteau (who apparently praised EWAF), in Beauty and the Beast (OK, I fell asleep watching it, but it seemed pretty good, and you have to admit those arms protruding from walls and holding torches inspired a ton of music videos) and Orphee (stayed awake, it rocks). The rain slick streets, bare trees, smartly dressed extras and Citroens (2CV and DS 19) follow from '50s French crime films, and anticipate early Godard. The series of photos depicting the failure of a transplant, with Christiane's face becoming progressively more scarred, like the victim of radiation burns, recalled the Woman Behind the Radiator in Eraserhead. I've mentioned the kinship with Rabid, and arguably also Dead Ringers. There was an Argento vibe, confirmed when I read that he cast Valli in Suspiria. And Franju used Lang's cinematographer, which contributed to the arresting, classical quality of the images. It's beautiful to look at, and approaches greatness. It's also the kind of film that works better in hindsight than on the screen, and might be most satisfying for a compiler of lineage and gatherer of footnotes like myself. In the time it takes to read this, you could have watched most of it. I'll just be here looking under stones and peering into darkened corners if you need me.

Chilling, French classic is not the trashy, gory horror B-movie it easily could have been, but instead aspired to a surprisingly touching and artistic cinematic work. A creepy, but sad story of respected but mad surgeon's attempting to restore his daughter's face after her auto wreck, with his morbid obsession leading him to work on experimental facial transplants...but how to get the donors? Shocking for it's time, infamous for gruesome scenes of surgery, memorable role of Edith Scob in an iconic mask, symbolic use of animals, a poetic ending, and it's unique stylish tone- often referred to as dreamy, lyrical, or compared to a fairy tale. Macabre but rather beautiful. Compare with Jean Cocteau's films Beauty And The Beast or Orpheus, or even the highly stylish Italian classic Suspiria. Criterion Collection's Blu Ray looks fine and showcases the expressionist photography. Extras include documentaries and interviews, one of which is an extremely graphic (thus extremely disturbing) but remarkably fascinating documentary on a famous Parisian slaughterhouse/abattoir- quite gross. Highly recommended to fans of cult classics and dark fairy tales.

A brilliant surgeon attempts to restore his daughter to her former beauty after a terrible car crash leaves her permanently disfigured. Using an experimental skin grafting procedure, Doctor Génessier comes closer and closer to achieving this goal, but modern medicine would never approve of his methods... Georges Franju's French classic ushers in a new era of surgical horror that would bleed in to the B-movie cinema of the 1960's and 70's in films like DR. BLOOD's COFFIN or Jess Franco's THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF. Where these later entries would exploit the theme for all of its gory potential, Franju focuses on the pathos of a character-driven drama that is riddled with grief, remorse, obsession, and despair. Questions of morality and ethics constantly plague the characters as the lines of right and wrong are blurred. We can never be certain whether Doctor Génessier continues his efforts out of the love and guilt that he feels for his daughter, or if it is the obsession with his own success that secretly drives him. We also find that the cost of vanity is eally quite deep, not just for the doctor and his daughter Christiane, but also for his victims. Many of these characters would choose death over disfigurement, devaluing a life lived without beauty. The elegant cinematography disarms the audience when it comes time to perform the surgeries, since the scenes are shot with such clinical precision and convincing special effects as to completely uphold the suspension of disbelief in a thrilling display of the Grand Guignol. Pierre Brasseur provides a flawless performance as Doctor Génessier, however it is Edith Scob who we truly identify with as Christiane. Scob's expressive performance speaks through the thick rubber mask which hides her facial features. EYES WITHOUT A FACE is not only significant for defining a whole new sub-genre in Horror, but it is also an all-around great film, and a timeless classic of world cinema.-Carl ManesI Like Horror Movies

The French always liked to camouflage their guilty pleasures as intellectual aspirations, and the genre movie, be it the thriller, the drama or the horror flic made in France have adorned themselves with metaphysical deliberations.Director Georges Franju, who in the 1930s established the Cinémateque Francais with the likes of Jack Lang, is not a pretentious Frenchman, far from it. He loved the bizarre and the grotesque, and if you share his taste for the poetically unfathomable, the suggestive, you will love this new CD from Criterion. 'Eyes Without a Face' is about a surgeon whose daughter was the victim of a car accident that peeled away the skin from her face. His nurse and mistress now picks up pretty young girls with whose skin the surgeon can experiment. His aim is to perfect a skin transplant to help his daughter. When the police gets a whiff of this they pick a young girl as a decoy and ... Well, you will have to see for yourself.The movie starts out as a somewhat shabby, but highly effective noir with Alida Valli driving her car nervously along the highway, trying to get rid of yet another corpse of a young woman. Gradually the film evolves into the silent horrors of the middle part (the only other two films I know that are equally silent are Bergman's 'The Silence' and Hitchcock's 'Notorious') and the climax of which I shall reveal absolutely nothing, but it is frankly unforgettable.

Very Happy -Thank you!RWW

Compre el bluray de Eyes without a face. Llegó al día siguiente de que hice mi compra, y en perfecto estado. Había escuchado que era un must see en cuanto a las películas de suspenso y fue cierto: la disfruté de principio a fin, la música en particular me gustó mucho.En cuanto al formato, sólo trae un disco y viene en inglés con subtítulos en inglés. Nada en español.Estoy completamente satisfecha y feliz

Les yeux sans visage (AKA: Eyes Without a Face) is directed by Georges Franju and collectively written by Franju, Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac and Claude Sautet. It stars Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel and Francois Guerin. Music is by Maurice Jarre and cinematography by Eugen Schufftan.Dr. Genessier (Brasseur) is wracked with guilt over the car accident he caused that saw his beloved daughter Christiane (Scob) suffer horrendous facial injuries. He has a notion to perform xenograft surgeries on female victims and transplant the face onto that of Christiane…It sounds like a classic mad scientist movie, the sort where Peter Lorre stalks around the place with a devilish grin on his face, only the French version! Eyes Without a Face isn’t that sort of horror film, haunting? Yes, but there is no killing for joy or sadism here, it’s done for love, to assuage guilt whilst advancing science. Oh it’s still madness, but there’s a real sadness to Dr. Genessier’s actions, touchingly so, and with Franju a master of hauntingly lyrical splendour, it’s a film as beautiful as it is troubling.Christiane is a living doll, a slow moving angel forced to wear a porcelain mask to hide her badly burned face. As she glides around the Gothic halls of the Genessier house – and the lower tier corridors of the hospital that’s annexed to the house - Franju never wastes a chance to poeticise a scene, using slow and long takes in silence that imbue the story with a sense of the foreboding. Even when there is dialogue, it’s always in hushed tones unless it involves the police, who are naturally suspicious of the good doctor Genessier.A number of evocative scenes are truly arresting, gorgeous in construction and meaning, none more so than the very final scene that closes the pic down. But the most talked about scene is the one of horror, the surgery procedure that we actually see, a magnificent breath holding sequence, gruesome but once again, done in the name of love! The tragedy of which is palpable. From the opening of the film as Louise (Dr. Genessier’s assistant played by Valli) drags a dead body to a lake, to a moving sequence as Christiane visits the caged dogs that serve as guinea pigs for her father’s experiments, the blend of horror with fairytale like sadness is beautifully rendered.Tech credits are very high. Schufftan’s photography is graceful and sombre, whilst Jarre’s musical score, particularly the macabre carnival tune he uses, is coming straight from the aural chambers of the surreal. Brasseur is terrific as Genessier, again playing a doctor (he was wonderful the year before in Head Against the Wall), Genessier is a tortured soul with ice cold blood running through his veins, and Brasseur nails it. The French Laird Cregar? Yes. That’s a justifiable compliment. In truth all performances are high in quality, with props to Scob who has to wear the immobile mask and act just with her sad puppy dog eyes.As the doves fly, this is what it sounds like when dogs – and a porcelain angel – cry. Indeed. 9/10

Cest le premier film de Criterion collection que j'achetais et je ne le regrette pas. Une belle restauration du son et de l'image comme Criterion sont réputés. Un suspense français qui sort de l'ordinaire de l'époque, des images marquantes, une excellente bande sonore. J'ai écouté le film plusieurs fois et je le recommande à tous les cinéphiles qui ne le connaissent pas. À voir!!!!....et à avoir dans sa collection!