Eyes Without a Face - Criterion Collection

Starring:Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob, FranÃ§ois GuÃ©rin, Alexandre Rignault, BÃ©atrice Altariba, Charles Blavette, Claude Brasseur, Michel Etcheverry, Yvette EtiÃ©vant, RenÃ© GÃ©nin, Lucien Hubert, Marcel PÃ©rÃ¨s, Charles Lavialle, Brigitte Juslin, Gabrielle Doulcet, Max Montavon, France Asselin, Corrado Guarducci
Director: Georges Franju
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Georges Franju brings a haunting poetry to this lyrical and horrifying 1959 French classic. Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), a famed plastic surgeon, lures a young woman to his secluded mansion with the help of his mistress Louise (Alida Valli), where he proceeds to remove their faces in an attempt to restore his daughter's scarred visage. Christiane (Edith Scob), disfigured in car accident caused by her guilt-ridden father, hides behind a spooky blank mask that exposes only her sad, lonely eyes, which seem to lose a little more life after each failed graft. Franju's cool presentation gives an unsettling edge to the picture, from the uncomfortably quiet family dinners to Christiane's hesitant explorations of her father's laboratory to the unflinching views of Genessier's bloody operations. Reminiscent of Cocteau's fantasy imagery in Beauty and the Beast, Franju creates an eerie poetry of the doctor's sadistic experiments, culminating in an astonishingly brutal and beautiful finale. The screenplay was cowritten by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, authors of the novels which became Les Diaboliques and Vertigo. Originally titled Les Yeux Sans Visage upon its original French release, the film was cut, dubbed, and renamed The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus for American distribution in 1962, but was restored years later for American re-release. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Secluded in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore his beloved daughter's once-beautiful face, but at a horrifying price. Lauded as a true rarity of horror cinema, Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans visage) has influenced countless films in its wake and stunned audiences around the world with its shocking yet poetic imagery. The Criterion Collection is proud to present Georges Franju's lyrical black-and-white classic in a long-awaited, high-definition DVD edition.

Customer Reviews:

A horror film, with no blood?.......2007-06-02

This is the ultimate achievement in horror, an incision of art into the insane. It's too easy to make a standard slasher flick, a madman on the loose with people scrambling in fear. Lots of blood and macabre to gross out the audience. None of that here. The fear generated in this movie is not that superficial.
This story is stitched around some normal people(it seems). A brilliant plastic surgeon has an incessant determination with his new project--the transplanting of living tissue from one human to another.
The match that lit his experimental fire was stricken by his beloved daughter, whose precious face was mutilated in a car accident. So the good doctor hunts down some unwillingly ladies and attempts to transplant their beautiful visage to his favorite patient.
There are some disturbing images and sequences that really stick with you, like the facial surgery, the eyes peering from behind the mask, the experimenting on animals. I think some other more recent films were heavily influenced by this classic, like Vanilla Sky and Face Off.
There are some deep layers of psychology this film sifts through and scatters around. Self-esteem, pride, selfishness, love. Plus it exemplifies the need for limitations on modern science.
Criterion comes through again, this is a movie that will freak you out and stick with you long after it's over. A creepy-crazy-good film!

Transplant Terror.......2007-05-05

"Eyes Without a Face" shines like a scalpel in sunlight in the pantheon of horror history. This is a great achievement considering the film emerged from France in 1959, amid the rise of the French New Wave and the colour gothic horrors of Hammer. But Georges Franju's monochrome masterpiece is strongly steeped in a French cultural heritage that includes influences from surrealism and Grand Guignol theatre. The social allegory of the film also pre-empts the modern horror film. The film's artistic credentials are assured by a narrative subjectivity, with character motivations not clearly delineated, this allies the film with the burgeoning art cinema that began to emerge in the uncertain 1960's. But Franju manages to bridge the gap between the populist formulaic aspects of the horror genre (images of transgression and excess) and the personal expression of the film artist in a way uncommon in the horror genre. For audiences this means that the film both satisfies the hardcore horror fan and those more interested in artistic merits. The film is given further impetus by an allegorical subtext which evokes the haunted spectre of World War Two and the holocaust and the role that France played in that terrible conflict. The stark images of hospitals, surgery, the breakthrough in cosmetic surgery and Dr. Genessier's experiments on animals, remind us all to painfully of Nazi experiments. The the role of the victim Christine further muddies the subjective waters of the film by being complicit in the murders that surround her. The film doesn't totally veer away fro the gothic though; a suitably isolated gothic chateau is the main setting, a deep ambivalence toward modernity and a tormented gothic heroine allies the film to gothic conventions.

This excellent DVD courtesy of the Criterion Collection also contains Franju's earlier surrealist documentary "Blood of the Beasts", which is as important a work as "Eyes Without a Face" and contains within it all the concerns Franju would return to for his horror feature. This is an essential item for fans of horror and art cinema alike.

Poetic Horror.......2007-01-23

Georges Franju's version of a mad scientist trying to play God tells about a brilliant but controlling and obsessive doctor who is trying to restore the face of his own beloved daughter that was horribly disfigured in a car accident caused by his reckless driving. He requires tissues of recently deceased young women that look like his daughter and he is not going to wait for them to die in an accident - he creates the accidents with help of his loyal secretary/nurse/lover/former patient Louise (Alida Valli of "The Third Man") who kidnaps the unsuspecting girls and brings them to the secluded mansion in one of Paris's suburbs where Doctor Génessier is ready to perform the fascinating and horrifying surgeries.

"Eyes without a Face" is a very impressive, classy picture that has inspired many later horror movies. The music by Maurice Jarr adds to the uneasy and creepy atmosphere - it makes you feel like on the never-stopping ominous merry-go-round and you can't get off it.

not your typical french flick.......2006-12-21

Excellent film. The criterion version features in the extras a few interviews with the director and a disturbing 22 minute documentary about french slaughterhouses in 1949.
This movie has a chilling performance by the head doctor, and amazing special effects for the time it was made. Very stylishly done film. I would recommend it to fans of Psycho.

Creepy and well made.......2006-12-02

This is one horror film that certainly stands apart from the lot. Made in 1960, it can still provide some impact today. It concerns Dr. Genessier, a surgeon whose daughter's face has been horribly disfigured in an accident. He has been experimenting with skin grafting in order to restore her beauty and her happiness along with it. Each attempt fails and until he can perfect a solution, he needs an endless supply of organ donors. His daughter, Christiane, isn't quite as optimistic as her father and grows increasingly despondent. See what happens when the police begin tracking the good doctor. Movies about transplants and medical experiments were hardly new territory at the time this film was made, though what sets this one apart is the graphic nature, good performances and tight script. It is unrelenting and even quite creepy at times. Pierre Brasseur is terrific as Dr. Genessier; he is cool, calm and heartless as he lies to the police and we wonder if he is experimenting for his daughter's happiness or to satisfy his own scientific curiosity. The film builds fairly intensely to the climax, which is rather satisfying. The Criterion Collection edition is, as usual, quite good. The transfer is excellent and the film is presented in its original French, though I don't understand the reason for using white subtitles rather than the standard yellow. Since much of the story takes place in a hospital with white sheets, surgical gowns, etc., the white subtitles sometimes do not stand out enough to read easily. Perhaps Criterion felt yellow subtitles would detract too much from the mood? Subtitle criticisms aside, this film deserved great treatment and it received it. Buy this one.

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Moonstruck

Offenbach: Orphee aux Enfers -- Lyon National

Apocalypse Watch (REGION 1) (NTSC)

DVD: Godfathers Collection - The True History of the Mafia

Die barfüßige Gräfin