A compelling and clinically brilliant combination of French art film and shock horror.
Eyes Without a Face (1959)
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Reviews Counted: 38
Fresh: 37
Rotten:1
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Consensus: A horrific tale of guilt and obsession, Eyes Without a Face is just as chilling and poetic today as it was in 1959.
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Based on Jean Redon's novel LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, French director Georges Franju's gloomy, atmospheric horror film EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a masterpiece of cinematic poetry. After his daughter... Based on Jean Redon's novel LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, French director Georges Franju's gloomy, atmospheric horror film EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a masterpiece of cinematic poetry. After his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) becomes horribly disfigured in a car accident of which he was the cause, guilt-ridden plastic surgeon Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) grows obsessed with perfecting the reconstruction of her once-beautiful, but now-ravaged, face. With the help of his sadistic nurse Louise (Alida Valli), Genessier kidnaps young girls and brings them back to his isolated manse for grisly medical procedures that graft the victims' living skins onto that of his daughter's. Often compared to Jean Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, the film's nightmarish power springs from the surrealistic beauty of its haunting images--from the fiercely blank mask that shields Christiane's wounded face to the merciless incisions of Genessier's surgeries--and a moving climactic scene that garners one of the most transcendent finales in all of cinematic history. [More]
Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli, Claude Brasseur
Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli, Claude Brasseur, Alexandre Rignault, Juliette Mayniel
Director: Georges Franju
Director: Georges Franju
Screenwriter: Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac
Producer: Jules Borkon
Composer: Maurice Jarre
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Reviews for Eyes Without a Face
ends up occupying uncharted territories somewhere between the gothic horrors of Frankenstein, the fairytale lyricism of La Belle et la Bete, and the charnel-house realism of Franju's own abbatoir-set documentary Le Sang Des Betes.
It has some queasy scenes, but unclear progression and plodding direction give this an old-fashioned air.
In its sedate, measured virtuosity, eloquently haunting imagery abuts the queasily naturalistic. It's both beautiful and grisly, lyric and sinister.
Has a baroque beauty rarely seen in the horror genre...the haunting final images are worthy of Poe or Cocteau.
Eyes Without a Face has the staging and rhythm of Noir, and, up until one incredible scene, employs horror with implication and ambiance.
[Director Franjau] concentrates on weaving an incredibly frail spell and keeps it wafting in just the right spaces throughout the film; the beautiful black-and-white, Cinemascope cinematography helps a great deal.
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