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.
The pulp poetic masterpiece from surrealist director Georges Franju, in which a maniacal plastic surgeon becomes obsessed with restoring his beloved daughter's face, which was mutilated in a horrible accident. When all conventional methods fail, he hatches a mad plot, murdering women in an insane attempt to graft their faces onto his daughter's.
Theatrical Release: November 17, 1995 (NYC)
Review 1:
"...From its expressive title to its brilliant, unsettling images, LES YEUX SANS VISAGE is a film to haunt your dreams..."
Source: Los Angeles Times
p.33 01/21/1996
Review 2:
4 stars out of 5 -- "Georges Franju's 1959 horror-fairytale hybrid remains a true one-off....This is like Bunuel untethered."
Source: Uncut
p.124 06/01/2008
Review 3:
4 stars out of 5 -- "Lyrical and macabre, its creepy aura prevails right through to its closing shot, still one of the most enigmatic in the genre -- haunting, confounding and destined to linger."
Source: Empire
p.171 07/01/2008
Review 4:
"...Genuine chills....Deeply unnerving..." -- Rating: A-
Source: Entertainment Weekly
pp.132-3 02/23/1996
Review 5:
"Franju constructs an elegant visual work; here is a horror movie in which the shrieks are not by the characters but by the images."
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
p.34 10/31/2003
Review 6:
"Maurice Jarre provides a disturbingly jaunty, nightmare-carousel score..."
Source: Sight and Sound
p.75 01/01/2005
Review 7:
"...Georges Franju's French horror masterpiece..."
Source: USA Today
p.6E 01/12/2001
Review 8:
"...A film to haunt your dreams. Disturbing, disorienting, quietly terrifying....A startlingly beautiful and artful piece of cinema as well..."
Source: Los Angeles Times
p.C4 10/31/2003
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