Eyes Without a Face
Encyclopedia
Eyes Without a Face is a 1960 French-language horror film
adaptation of Jean Redon's novel, directed by Georges Franju
, and starring Pierre Brasseur
and Alida Valli
. During the film's production, consideration was given to the standards of European censors by setting the right tone, minimizing gore and eliminating the mad-scientist
character. Although the film passed through the European censors, the film's release in Europe caused controversy nevertheless. Critical reaction ranged from praise to disgust.
The film received an American debut in an edited and dubbed
form in 1962 under the title of The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. In the U.S. the film was released as a double feature
with the horror film, The Manster
(1959). The film's initial critical reception was not overtly positive, but subsequent theatrical and home video re-release of the film increased its reputation. Modern critics praise the film today for its poetic nature as well as being a notable influence on other filmmakers.
s (Alsatians) and other large dogs.
Following Christiane's funeral, Dr. Génessier and his assistant Louise, the woman who had disposed of the dead body earlier, return home where the real Christiane is hidden. The body belonged to a young woman that died following Dr. Génessier's unsuccessful attempt to graft her face onto his daughter's. Dr. Génessier promises to restore Christiane's face and insists that she wear a mask to cover her disfigurement. After her father leaves the room, Christiane calls her fiance Jacques Vernon (François Guérin
), who works with Dr. Génessier at his clinic, but hangs up without saying a word.
Louise lures a young female student named Edna Gruber (Juliette Mayniel
) to Génessier's home, by promising her accommodation from friends of hers. Génessier chloroforms Edna and takes her to his secret laboratory, where he performs heterograft
surgery, removing her face. The doctor successfully grafts the skin onto his daughter's face and holds the heavily bandaged and faceless Edna against her will. Edna escapes, but falls to her death from an upstairs window. After disposing of Edna's corpse, Génessier notices flaws on Christiane's face. Her face grows worse within days; the new tissue is being rejected
and she must resort to wearing her mask again. Christiane again phones Jacques and this time says his name, but the phone call is interrupted by Louise.
Jacques reports the call to the police, who have been investigating the disappearance of several young women with blue eyes and similar facial characteristics. The police have gained a lead concerning a woman who wears a pearl choker, whom Jacques recognizes as Louise. Inspector Parot (Alexandre Rignault), an officer investigating Edna's disappearance, asks a young woman named Paulette Mérodon (Beatrice Altariba) to help investigate by checking herself into Génessier's clinic. After being declared healthy, Paulette leaves for Paris and is promptly picked up by Louise, who delivers her to Dr. Génessier. Génessier is about to begin surgery on Paulette when Louise informs him that the police want to see him. While the doctor talks with the police, Christiane, who has long been disenchanted with her father's experiments, frees Paulette and stabs Louise in the neck. She also frees the dogs and doves that her father uses for experiments. Dr. Génessier dismisses the police and returns to his lab, where the dogs attack him, brutally disfiguring his face. Christiane walks slowly into the woods outside Génessier's house with one of the freed doves on her hand.
horror films such as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula
(1958) were popular with French filmgoers. At the time, similar modern horror films had not been attempted by French film makers until producer Jules Borkon decided to tap into the horror market. Borkon bought the rights to the Redon novel and offered the directorial role to one of the founders of Cinémathèque Française
, Franju, who was directing his first non-documentary
feature La Tête contre les murs
(1958). Franju had grown up during the French silent-film era
when filmmakers such as Georges Méliès
and Louis Feuillade
were making fantastique
-themed films, and he relished the opportunity to contribute to the genre. Franju felt the story was not a horror film; rather, he described his vision of the film as one of "anguish... it's a quieter mood than horror... more internal, more penetrating. It's horror in homeopathic doses."
To avoid problems with European censors, Borkon cautioned Franju not to include too much blood (which would upset French censors
), refrain from showing animals getting tortured (which would upset English censors
) and leave out mad-scientist characters (which would upset German censors
). All three of these were part of the film, presenting a challenge to find the right tone for presenting these story elements in the film. First, working with Claude Sautet
who was also serving as first assistant director and who laid out the preliminary screenplay, Franju hired the writing team of Boileau-Narcejac
(Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac) who had written novels adapted as Henri-Georges Clouzot
's Les Diaboliques
(1955) and Alfred Hitchcock
's Vertigo
(1958). The writers shifted the novel's focus from Doctor Génessier's character to that of his daughter, Christiane; this shift revealed the doctor's character in a more positive and understandable light and helped to avoid the censorship restrictions.
For his production staff, Franju enlisted people with whom he had previously worked on earlier projects. Cinematographer
Eugen Schüfftan
, best remembered for developing the Schüfftan process
, was chosen to render the visuals of the film. Schüfftan had worked with Franju on La Tête Contre les Murs (1958). Film historian David Kalat called Shüfftan "the ideal choice to illustrate Franju's nightmares". (Only two years later, Shüfftan won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
for his work on The Hustler
(1961).) French composer
Maurice Jarre
created the haunting score for the film. Jarre had also previously worked with Franju on his film La Tête Contre les Murs (1958). Modern critics note the film's two imposing musical themes, a jaunty carnival
-esque waltz (featured while Louise picks up young women for Doctor Génessier) and a lighter, sadder piece for Christiane. Jarre subsequently wrote the music score Lawrence of Arabia
(1962) and Doctor Zhivago
(1965) among other films.
Eyes without a Face completed filming in 1959, and had its debut in Paris
on March 2, 1960. Although it passed through the European censors, the film caused controversy on its release in Europe. The French news magazine L'Express
noted the audience "dropped like flies" during the heterografting scene. During the film's showing at the 1960 Edinburgh Film Festival, seven audience members fainted, to which director Franju responded, "Now I know why Scotsmen wear skirts
."
For the American
release in 1962, the film was cut. It was given an English-language dub
, and re-titled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. Edits in the Dr. Faustus version removed parts of the heterografting scene as well as scenes showing Doctor Génessier's more human side such his loving care for a small child at his clinic. The distributors recognized the artistic merit of the film and played up that element in promotion with an advertisement quoting the London Observer
s positive statements about the film and noting its showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival. This is in contrast to presentation of the secondary feature, The Manster
(1962), which mainly focused on the carnie-show aspect with its "two-headed monster" and "Invasion from outer space by two-headed creature killer". Eyes Without a Face had a very limited initial run and there was little reception from the American mainstream press. Eyes Without a Face received its second large theatrical release in a September 1986 re-release of the film (in conjunction with retrospectives at the National Film Theatre in London and at film archive Cinémathèque Française
for its 50th anniversary in France
. As a founder of Cinémathèque Française, the archive celebrated Franju by presenting the director's back catalogue. The film was re-released in its original form to American theatres on October 31, 2003 under its original running time and title.
on January 9, 2001 by Kino Video and on DVD
on October 19, 2004 by The Criterion Collection
. The DVD also contains Georges Franju's first documentary Blood of the Beasts
(1949), a depiction of a French slaughterhouse. A Region 2 release of Eyes Without a Face was released April 21, 2008 by Second Sight Films. A Region 4 edition of the film was released on July 2, 2007 by Umbrella Entertainment. The disc also included Franju's documentary Blood of the Beasts.
or simply a disappointment of the director's leap from documentary filmmaker
to a genre filmmaker claiming the film to be in a "minor genre, quite unworthy of his abilities". Franju responded to these comments claiming the film was his attempt to get the minor genre to be taken seriously. In England, Isabel Quigly, film critic for The Spectator
, called it "the sickest film since I started film criticism", while a reviewer who admitted that she liked the film was nearly fired. A review in Variety
was negative, noting specifically that the "stilted acting, asides to explain characters and motivations, and a repetition of effects lose the initial impact" and an "unclear progression and plodding direction give [the film] an old-fashioned air".
With the September 1986 re-release of the film, in conjunction with retrospectives at the National Film Theatre in London and at the Cinémathèque Française
in France
of the director's back catalogue, the film's critical status began to be re-evaluated. French critics' response to the film was much more positive than it was on its original release, with former editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma
Serge Daney
calling the film "a marvel".
The film was re-released in its original form to American theatres on October 31, 2003 and received great critical acclaim. Based on 35 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes
, Eyes Without a Face received an average 97 percent overall approval rating with an average rating of 8.1/10. The reviewers commented on the film's poetic nature and noted the strong influence of French poet
and filmmaker Jean Cocteau
. Jonathan Rosenbaum
of the Chicago Reader praised the film, referring to it as "absurd and as beautiful as a fairy tale". J. Hoberman
of The Village Voice
declared the film "a masterpiece of poetic horror and tactful, tactile brutality". The Encyclopedia of Horror Films noted the Cocteau influence, stating that "Franju invests [the film] with a weird poetry in which the influence of Cocteau is unmistakable". David Edelstein of Slate
also compared the film to Cocteau's work, commenting that "the storyline is your standard obsessed-mad-doctor saga, one step above a Poverty Row
Bela Lugosi
feature ... [b]ut it's Lugosi by way of Cocteau and Ionesco
".
Play Time released the soundtrack on Compact Disc
along with other soundtracks performed by Jarre. This also includes soundtracks from other Franju films including La Tête contre les Murs and Thérèse Desqueyroux.
an films since its release. Spanish
director Jesús Franco
created films throughout his career that were influenced by the film. Franco's first was the Spanish and French co-production of Gritos en la noche
(1962). Franco's variation of the film concerns the efforts of a mad surgeon, Dr. Orloff, to reconstruct the face of his disfigured daughter Melissa. Inspector Edgar Tanner investigates Orlof using his girlfriend, Wanda Bronsky, as an undercover spy. Franco followed with several sequels to Gritos en la noche. He made one more film strongly influenced by the Franju film, Faceless
(1988). Faceless has a similar plot involving beautiful women who are abducted by Dr. Flamand's (Helmut Berger
) female assistant and kept hostage. The doctor uses the skin of the women to perform plastic surgery on his disfigured sister, but the experiments leave the victims mutilated and dead. The Italian film
Atom Age Vampire
(1961) was also influenced by Eyes Without a Face with a doctor attempting to take the faces of other women to repair his daughter's face. These homages are seen in the plot line of a police lieutenant who is investigating the circumstances behind the death of a young girl whose body has scars around the eyes. The lieutenant's investigation eventually leads him to a plastic surgery clinic, a similar plot motivation to Eyes Without a Face. The British film Corruption (1968) adds a variation to the theme: A surgeon tries to restore his fiancee's beauty by repeatedly treating her with extracted fluids from the pituitary gland of female victims.
The film also influenced American
film productions. John Carpenter
has suggested that the film inspired the idea of a featureless mask for the Michael Myers
character in the slasher
film series
Halloween
. Carpenter recalls that the film crew "didn't have any money to make a mask. It was originally written the way you see it, in other words, it's a pale mask with human features, almost featureless. I don't know why I wrote that down, why Debra [Hill
] and I decided on that, maybe it was because of an old movie called Eyes Without a Face".
DVD
film reviews have suggested the film influenced director John Woo
; critics have compared the graphic detail of the face transplant scene in Woo's action film
Face/Off
(1997) to the face transplant scene in Eyes Without a Face and noted the similarity. Another resemblance is Woo's trademark use of white doves in his films that is similar to the character Christiane's dove-laden escape in the film's finale.
In 2001, on the television program VH1 Storytellers
, singer Billy Idol
cited the film as giving him the idea for his song Eyes Without a Face
. The song, which has the film's original French title ("Les Yeux Sans Visage") as the recurring background chorus, however, takes the idea of the film's father relationship and outlook toward his daughter and recasts it describing the deteriorated relationship between the narrator and his lover. The song would become Idol's first top-ten hit in the U.S.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
adaptation of Jean Redon's novel, directed by Georges Franju
Georges Franju
-External links:* at Allmovie...
, and starring Pierre Brasseur
Pierre Brasseur
Pierre Brasseur , born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.He was the son of actor Georges Espinasse and actress Germaine Brasseur while the latter was married to Albert Brasseur. His grandfather, Jules Brasseur, was an actor as well...
and Alida Valli
Alida Valli
Alida Valli , sometimes simply credited as Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films, including Mario Soldati's Piccolo mondo antico, Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido, Luchino Visconti's Senso, Bernardo...
. During the film's production, consideration was given to the standards of European censors by setting the right tone, minimizing gore and eliminating the mad-scientist
Mad scientist
A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...
character. Although the film passed through the European censors, the film's release in Europe caused controversy nevertheless. Critical reaction ranged from praise to disgust.
The film received an American debut in an edited and dubbed
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...
form in 1962 under the title of The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. In the U.S. the film was released as a double feature
Double feature
The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.The double feature, also known as...
with the horror film, The Manster
The Manster
is a tokusatsu 1959 horror film, a co-production between the US and Japan, starring Peter Dyneley. The film was notable for its creative use of special effects...
(1959). The film's initial critical reception was not overtly positive, but subsequent theatrical and home video re-release of the film increased its reputation. Modern critics praise the film today for its poetic nature as well as being a notable influence on other filmmakers.
Plot
At night just outside Paris, a woman (Valli) drives along a riverbank and dumps a corpse in the river. After the body is recovered, Dr. Génessier (Brasseur) identifies the remains as those of his missing daughter, Christiane Génessier (Scob), whose face was horribly disfigured in an automobile accident that occurred before her disappearance. Dr. Génessier lives in a large mansion, which is adjacent to his clinic, with numerous caged German ShepherdGerman Shepherd Dog
The German Shepherd Dog , also known as an Alsatian or just the German Shepherd, is a breed of large-sized dog that originated in Germany. The German Shepherd is a relatively new breed of dog, with its origin dating to 1899. As part of the Herding Group, the German Shepherd is a working dog...
s (Alsatians) and other large dogs.
Following Christiane's funeral, Dr. Génessier and his assistant Louise, the woman who had disposed of the dead body earlier, return home where the real Christiane is hidden. The body belonged to a young woman that died following Dr. Génessier's unsuccessful attempt to graft her face onto his daughter's. Dr. Génessier promises to restore Christiane's face and insists that she wear a mask to cover her disfigurement. After her father leaves the room, Christiane calls her fiance Jacques Vernon (François Guérin
François Guérin
-Selected filmography:* La Vie d'un honnête homme * Mam'zelle Nitouche * The Aristocrats * Maid in Paris * Mitsou * Ramuntcho * Eyes Without a Face * Dear Caroline...
), who works with Dr. Génessier at his clinic, but hangs up without saying a word.
Juliette Mayniel
Juliette Mayniel is a French actress. She appeared in 35 films and television shows between 1958 and 1978. At the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her role in the film The Fair....
) to Génessier's home, by promising her accommodation from friends of hers. Génessier chloroforms Edna and takes her to his secret laboratory, where he performs heterograft
Skin grafting
Skin grafting is a type of graft surgery involving the transplantation of skin. The transplanted tissue is called a skin graft.Skin grafting is often used to treat:*Extensive wounding or trauma*Burns...
surgery, removing her face. The doctor successfully grafts the skin onto his daughter's face and holds the heavily bandaged and faceless Edna against her will. Edna escapes, but falls to her death from an upstairs window. After disposing of Edna's corpse, Génessier notices flaws on Christiane's face. Her face grows worse within days; the new tissue is being rejected
Transplant rejection
Transplant rejection occurs when transplanted tissue is rejected by the recipient's immune system, which destroys the transplanted tissue. Transplant rejection can be lessened by determining the molecular similitude between donor and recipient and by use of immunosuppressant drugs after...
and she must resort to wearing her mask again. Christiane again phones Jacques and this time says his name, but the phone call is interrupted by Louise.
Jacques reports the call to the police, who have been investigating the disappearance of several young women with blue eyes and similar facial characteristics. The police have gained a lead concerning a woman who wears a pearl choker, whom Jacques recognizes as Louise. Inspector Parot (Alexandre Rignault), an officer investigating Edna's disappearance, asks a young woman named Paulette Mérodon (Beatrice Altariba) to help investigate by checking herself into Génessier's clinic. After being declared healthy, Paulette leaves for Paris and is promptly picked up by Louise, who delivers her to Dr. Génessier. Génessier is about to begin surgery on Paulette when Louise informs him that the police want to see him. While the doctor talks with the police, Christiane, who has long been disenchanted with her father's experiments, frees Paulette and stabs Louise in the neck. She also frees the dogs and doves that her father uses for experiments. Dr. Génessier dismisses the police and returns to his lab, where the dogs attack him, brutally disfiguring his face. Christiane walks slowly into the woods outside Génessier's house with one of the freed doves on her hand.
Cast
- Pierre BrasseurPierre BrasseurPierre Brasseur , born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.He was the son of actor Georges Espinasse and actress Germaine Brasseur while the latter was married to Albert Brasseur. His grandfather, Jules Brasseur, was an actor as well...
as Doctor Génessier: a University professor, physician and father of Christiane. Génessier experiments on his pet dogs and performs heterograft surgeries on women to try and restore the face of his daughter Christiane. Brasseur previously worked with director Georges FranjuGeorges Franju-External links:* at Allmovie...
in the dramaDrama filmA drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, La Tête contre les mursLa Tête contre les mursHead Against the Wall is a 1958 French drama film directed by Georges Franju and starring Pierre Brasseur, Paul Meurisse, and Jean-Pierre Mocky. The story follows Francois who is institutionalized by Marbeau for daring to defy his wealthy father. Francois' verges of insanity during his...
(1958), again in a leading role playing a doctor. - Edith ScobÉdith ScobEdith Scob is a French actress, best known for her role as the daughter with a disfigured face in Eyes Without a Face.Edith Scob has had several roles in European film and television and is married to Georges Aperghis....
as Christiane Génessier: the daughter of Doctor Génessier. Christiane's face was damaged in a car accident caused by her father. For most of the film, her face is covered by a stiff mask that resembles her face before the accident. Like Brasseur, Scob was also cast by Franju in La Tête Contre les Murs, but in a minor role. Scob later worked with Franju on four later films. - Alida ValliAlida ValliAlida Valli , sometimes simply credited as Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films, including Mario Soldati's Piccolo mondo antico, Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido, Luchino Visconti's Senso, Bernardo...
as Louise: a woman who is Génessier's assistant, kidnaps young women, assists him in the laboratory and acts as a surrogate mother to Christiane. Louise aids Génessier partly because of his help in restoring her damaged face in events that happened before the film begins. - François GuérinFrançois Guérin-Selected filmography:* La Vie d'un honnête homme * Mam'zelle Nitouche * The Aristocrats * Maid in Paris * Mitsou * Ramuntcho * Eyes Without a Face * Dear Caroline...
as Jacques Vernon: a student of Génessier and Christiane's fiancé. Jacques is unaware of Doctor Génessier's criminal activity and believes Christiane is dead. After receiving a phone call from Christiane, he helps the police in investigating the crime. - Juliette MaynielJuliette MaynielJuliette Mayniel is a French actress. She appeared in 35 films and television shows between 1958 and 1978. At the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her role in the film The Fair....
as Edna Gruber: a young woman who becomes a victim of Doctor Génessier experiments after being befriended by Louise in Paris. Edna is the first woman whose face is successfully transplanted to Christiane. While recovering from the surgery, she attacks Louise and then leaps from a window at Génessier's home and dies. - Alexandre Rignault as Inspector Parot: a police inspector investigating the disappearances of Génessier's victims. Parot ultimately discovers that all of the missing girls have similar features.
- Beatrice Altariba as Paulette Mérodon: a young woman who is taken into police custody after being caught shoplifting. Due to a resemblance with the women Génessier has kidnapped, she is informed by Parot that the charges against her will be dropped if she checks into Génessier's clinic. She is subsequently released and kidnapped to have her face transplanted, but is saved by Christiane before Génessier is able to perform surgery on her.
Production
In the late 1950s, BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
horror films such as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula
Dracula (1958 film)
Dracula, also known as Horror of Dracula in the United States, is a 1958 British horror film. It is the first in the series of Hammer Horror films inspired by the Bram Stoker novel Dracula. It was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Carol Marsh, Melissa Stribling and...
(1958) were popular with French filmgoers. At the time, similar modern horror films had not been attempted by French film makers until producer Jules Borkon decided to tap into the horror market. Borkon bought the rights to the Redon novel and offered the directorial role to one of the founders of Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
, Franju, who was directing his first non-documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
feature La Tête contre les murs
La Tête contre les murs
Head Against the Wall is a 1958 French drama film directed by Georges Franju and starring Pierre Brasseur, Paul Meurisse, and Jean-Pierre Mocky. The story follows Francois who is institutionalized by Marbeau for daring to defy his wealthy father. Francois' verges of insanity during his...
(1958). Franju had grown up during the French silent-film era
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
when filmmakers such as Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
and Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...
were making fantastique
Fantastique
The Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror and fantasy.The fantastique is a substantial genre within French literature...
-themed films, and he relished the opportunity to contribute to the genre. Franju felt the story was not a horror film; rather, he described his vision of the film as one of "anguish... it's a quieter mood than horror... more internal, more penetrating. It's horror in homeopathic doses."
To avoid problems with European censors, Borkon cautioned Franju not to include too much blood (which would upset French censors
Censorship in France
France has a long history of governmental censorship, particularly in the 16th to 18th centuries, but today freedom of press is guaranteed by the French Constitution and instances of governmental censorship are relatively limited and isolated....
), refrain from showing animals getting tortured (which would upset English censors
Censorship in the United Kingdom
Censorship in the United Kingdom has a long history with variously stringent and lax laws in place at different times. Censorship of motion pictures, video games and Internet sites hosted in the United Kingdom are considered to be among the strictest in the European Union, the strictest being...
) and leave out mad-scientist characters (which would upset German censors
Censorship in Germany
Censorship in Germany has taken many forms during the history of the region. Various regimes have restricted the press, theatre, cinema, and other entertainment venues.-German Empire :In the German Empire, many media were under Imperial control...
). All three of these were part of the film, presenting a challenge to find the right tone for presenting these story elements in the film. First, working with Claude Sautet
Claude Sautet
Claude Sautet was a French author and film director.-Biography:Born in Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine, France, Claude Sautet first studied painting and sculpture before attending a film university in Paris where he began his career and later became a television producer...
who was also serving as first assistant director and who laid out the preliminary screenplay, Franju hired the writing team of Boileau-Narcejac
Boileau-Narcejac
Boileau-Narcejac is the nom de plume under which French crime fiction writers Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud, aka Thomas Narcejac collaborated...
(Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac) who had written novels adapted as Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s...
's Les Diaboliques
Les Diaboliques (film)
Les Diaboliques , released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends, is a 1955 French black-and-white thriller feature film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse...
(1955) and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
(1958). The writers shifted the novel's focus from Doctor Génessier's character to that of his daughter, Christiane; this shift revealed the doctor's character in a more positive and understandable light and helped to avoid the censorship restrictions.
For his production staff, Franju enlisted people with whom he had previously worked on earlier projects. Cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Eugen Schüfftan
Eugen Schüfftan
Eugen Schüfftan was a cinematographer.He invented the Schüfftan process, a special effects technique that employed mirrors to insert actors into miniature sets. One of the first uses of the process was for Metropolis , directed by Fritz Lang...
, best remembered for developing the Schüfftan process
Schüfftan process
The Schüfftan process is a movie special effect named after its inventor, Eugen Schüfftan . It was widely used in the first half of the 20th century before being almost completely replaced by the travelling matte and bluescreen effects....
, was chosen to render the visuals of the film. Schüfftan had worked with Franju on La Tête Contre les Murs (1958). Film historian David Kalat called Shüfftan "the ideal choice to illustrate Franju's nightmares". (Only two years later, Shüfftan won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
for his work on The Hustler
The Hustler (film)
The Hustler is a 1961 American drama film directed by Robert Rossen from the 1959 novel of the same name he and Sidney Carroll adapted for the screen...
(1961).) French composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Maurice Jarre
Maurice Jarre
Maurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor.Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia...
created the haunting score for the film. Jarre had also previously worked with Franju on his film La Tête Contre les Murs (1958). Modern critics note the film's two imposing musical themes, a jaunty carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
-esque waltz (featured while Louise picks up young women for Doctor Génessier) and a lighter, sadder piece for Christiane. Jarre subsequently wrote the music score Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia (film)
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely...
(1962) and Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago (1965 film)
Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 epic drama-romance-war film directed by David Lean and loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak...
(1965) among other films.
Release
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
on March 2, 1960. Although it passed through the European censors, the film caused controversy on its release in Europe. The French news magazine L'Express
L'Express (France)
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...
noted the audience "dropped like flies" during the heterografting scene. During the film's showing at the 1960 Edinburgh Film Festival, seven audience members fainted, to which director Franju responded, "Now I know why Scotsmen wear skirts
Kilt
The kilt is a knee-length garment with pleats at the rear, originating in the traditional dress of men and boys in the Scottish Highlands of the 16th century. Since the 19th century it has become associated with the wider culture of Scotland in general, or with Celtic heritage even more broadly...
."
For the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
release in 1962, the film was cut. It was given an English-language dub
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...
, and re-titled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. Edits in the Dr. Faustus version removed parts of the heterografting scene as well as scenes showing Doctor Génessier's more human side such his loving care for a small child at his clinic. The distributors recognized the artistic merit of the film and played up that element in promotion with an advertisement quoting the London Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
s positive statements about the film and noting its showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival. This is in contrast to presentation of the secondary feature, The Manster
The Manster
is a tokusatsu 1959 horror film, a co-production between the US and Japan, starring Peter Dyneley. The film was notable for its creative use of special effects...
(1962), which mainly focused on the carnie-show aspect with its "two-headed monster" and "Invasion from outer space by two-headed creature killer". Eyes Without a Face had a very limited initial run and there was little reception from the American mainstream press. Eyes Without a Face received its second large theatrical release in a September 1986 re-release of the film (in conjunction with retrospectives at the National Film Theatre in London and at film archive Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
for its 50th anniversary in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. As a founder of Cinémathèque Française, the archive celebrated Franju by presenting the director's back catalogue. The film was re-released in its original form to American theatres on October 31, 2003 under its original running time and title.
Home video
Eyes Without a Face was released on VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
on January 9, 2001 by Kino Video and on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on October 19, 2004 by The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
. The DVD also contains Georges Franju's first documentary Blood of the Beasts
Blood of the Beasts
Blood of the Beasts is a 1949 short French documentary film written and directed by Georges Franju. Blood of the Beasts was Franju's first film and is narrated by Georges Hubert and Nicole Ladmiral...
(1949), a depiction of a French slaughterhouse. A Region 2 release of Eyes Without a Face was released April 21, 2008 by Second Sight Films. A Region 4 edition of the film was released on July 2, 2007 by Umbrella Entertainment. The disc also included Franju's documentary Blood of the Beasts.
Reception
On the film's initial release, the French critics' general response was moderate, ranging from mild enthusiasm to general disdain or disappointment, claiming it to be either a repetition of German expressionismGerman Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
or simply a disappointment of the director's leap from documentary filmmaker
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
to a genre filmmaker claiming the film to be in a "minor genre, quite unworthy of his abilities". Franju responded to these comments claiming the film was his attempt to get the minor genre to be taken seriously. In England, Isabel Quigly, film critic for The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, called it "the sickest film since I started film criticism", while a reviewer who admitted that she liked the film was nearly fired. A review in Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
was negative, noting specifically that the "stilted acting, asides to explain characters and motivations, and a repetition of effects lose the initial impact" and an "unclear progression and plodding direction give [the film] an old-fashioned air".
With the September 1986 re-release of the film, in conjunction with retrospectives at the National Film Theatre in London and at the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
of the director's back catalogue, the film's critical status began to be re-evaluated. French critics' response to the film was much more positive than it was on its original release, with former editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
Serge Daney
Serge Daney
Serge Daney was an influential French movie critic who went on from writing film reviews to developing a “television criticism” and onto building a personal theory of the image...
calling the film "a marvel".
The film was re-released in its original form to American theatres on October 31, 2003 and received great critical acclaim. Based on 35 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, Eyes Without a Face received an average 97 percent overall approval rating with an average rating of 8.1/10. The reviewers commented on the film's poetic nature and noted the strong influence of French poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and filmmaker Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
of the Chicago Reader praised the film, referring to it as "absurd and as beautiful as a fairy tale". J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
of The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
declared the film "a masterpiece of poetic horror and tactful, tactile brutality". The Encyclopedia of Horror Films noted the Cocteau influence, stating that "Franju invests [the film] with a weird poetry in which the influence of Cocteau is unmistakable". David Edelstein of Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
also compared the film to Cocteau's work, commenting that "the storyline is your standard obsessed-mad-doctor saga, one step above a Poverty Row
Poverty Row
Poverty Row is a slang term used in Hollywood from the late silent period through the mid-fifties to refer to a variety of small and mostly short-lived B movie studios...
Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
feature ... [b]ut it's Lugosi by way of Cocteau and Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
".
Soundtrack
Long after the film's original release, in February 2005, the French soundtrack record labelRecord label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
Play Time released the soundtrack on Compact Disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
along with other soundtracks performed by Jarre. This also includes soundtracks from other Franju films including La Tête contre les Murs and Thérèse Desqueyroux.
Tracklisting
Legacy
The film has influenced a handful of EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an films since its release. Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
director Jesús Franco
Jesús Franco
Jesús "Jess" Franco is a Spanish film director, writer, cinematographer and actor. His career took off in 1961 with his cult classic The Awful Dr. Orloff, which received wide distribution in the United States and England...
created films throughout his career that were influenced by the film. Franco's first was the Spanish and French co-production of Gritos en la noche
Gritos en la noche
Gritos en la noche AKA The Awful Dr. Orloff was an early horror film of cult director Jesús Franco. It stars Howard Vernon as the mad Dr. Orloff who wants to repair his disfigured daughter's face with skin grafts from others...
(1962). Franco's variation of the film concerns the efforts of a mad surgeon, Dr. Orloff, to reconstruct the face of his disfigured daughter Melissa. Inspector Edgar Tanner investigates Orlof using his girlfriend, Wanda Bronsky, as an undercover spy. Franco followed with several sequels to Gritos en la noche. He made one more film strongly influenced by the Franju film, Faceless
Faceless (film)
Faceless is a 1988 French slasher film directed by Jesús Franco. The film is about Dr. Flamand and his assistant Nathalie who lure unsuspecting victims to use their skin to perform plastic surgery on the doctor's disfigured sister - a plot reminiscent of Franco's first film, Gritos en la noche...
(1988). Faceless has a similar plot involving beautiful women who are abducted by Dr. Flamand's (Helmut Berger
Helmut Berger
Helmut Berger is an Austrian-born German film and television actor. He is most famous for his work with Luchino Visconti, particularly in his performance as King Ludwig II of Bavaria in Ludwig, for which he received a special David di Donatello award.He appears primarily in European cinema, but...
) female assistant and kept hostage. The doctor uses the skin of the women to perform plastic surgery on his disfigured sister, but the experiments leave the victims mutilated and dead. The Italian film
Cinema of Italy
The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had patented their Cinematographe, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.-Early years:...
Atom Age Vampire
Atom Age Vampire
Atom Age Vampire is a 1963 black-and-white Italian horror/science fiction film directed by Anton Giulio Majano and starring Alberto Lupo.-Plot:...
(1961) was also influenced by Eyes Without a Face with a doctor attempting to take the faces of other women to repair his daughter's face. These homages are seen in the plot line of a police lieutenant who is investigating the circumstances behind the death of a young girl whose body has scars around the eyes. The lieutenant's investigation eventually leads him to a plastic surgery clinic, a similar plot motivation to Eyes Without a Face. The British film Corruption (1968) adds a variation to the theme: A surgeon tries to restore his fiancee's beauty by repeatedly treating her with extracted fluids from the pituitary gland of female victims.
The film also influenced American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film productions. John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
has suggested that the film inspired the idea of a featureless mask for the Michael Myers
Michael Myers (Halloween)
Michael Myers is a fictional character from the Halloween series of slasher films. He first appears in John Carpenter's Halloween as a young boy who murders his older sister, then fifteen years later returns home to murder more teenagers...
character in the slasher
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
film series
Film series
A film series is a collection of related films in succession. Their relationship is not fixed, but generally share a common diegetic world. Sometimes the work is conceived as a multiple-film work, for example the Three Colours series, but in most cases the success of the original film inspires...
Halloween
Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of ten slasher films, novels, and comic books. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers...
. Carpenter recalls that the film crew "didn't have any money to make a mask. It was originally written the way you see it, in other words, it's a pale mask with human features, almost featureless. I don't know why I wrote that down, why Debra [Hill
Debra Hill
Debra Hill was an American screenwriter and film producer, who co-wrote the horror film Halloween, its first sequel Halloween II, and The Fog.-Early life:...
] and I decided on that, maybe it was because of an old movie called Eyes Without a Face".
DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
film reviews have suggested the film influenced director John Woo
John Woo
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS is a Hong Kong-based film director and producer. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard...
; critics have compared the graphic detail of the face transplant scene in Woo's action film
Action film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
Face/Off
Face/Off
Face/Off is a 1997 action thriller film directed by John Woo, starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. The two both play an FBI agent and a terrorist, sworn enemies who assume the physical appearance of one another....
(1997) to the face transplant scene in Eyes Without a Face and noted the similarity. Another resemblance is Woo's trademark use of white doves in his films that is similar to the character Christiane's dove-laden escape in the film's finale.
In 2001, on the television program VH1 Storytellers
VH1 Storytellers
Storytellers is a television music series produced by the VH1 network.In each episode artists perform in front of a live audience, and tell stories about their music, writing experiences and memories, somewhat similar to MTV Unplugged...
, singer Billy Idol
Billy Idol
William Michael Albert Broad , better known by his stage name Billy Idol, is an English rock musician. A member of the Bromley Contingent of Sex Pistols fans, Idol first achieved fame in the punk rock era as a member of the band Generation X...
cited the film as giving him the idea for his song Eyes Without a Face
Eyes Without a Face (song)
"Eyes Without a Face" is a song by Billy Idol, co-written with guitarist Steve Stevens from Idol's 1983 album Rebel Yell. The song is softer and more ballad-like than most of the album's other singles.-Song information:...
. The song, which has the film's original French title ("Les Yeux Sans Visage") as the recurring background chorus, however, takes the idea of the film's father relationship and outlook toward his daughter and recasts it describing the deteriorated relationship between the narrator and his lover. The song would become Idol's first top-ten hit in the U.S.
See also
- 1960 in film1960 in filmThe year 1960 in film involved some significant events, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the top-grossing release in the U.S.-Events:* April 20 - for the first time since coming home from military service in Germany, Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood, California to film G.I...
- French films of 1960French films of 1960A list of films produced in France in 1960.-1960:-External links:* at the Internet Movie Database**...
- Italian films of 1960Italian films of 1960A list of films produced in Italy in 1960 :-External links:* at the Internet Movie Database...
- List of French-language films
- List of horror films of the 1960s