It’s a horror movie! It’s a European art film! It’s a classic! It’s probably unlike any horror movie you’ve watched before. There are moments of unforgettable beauty as well as five minutes of graphic surgery. It is, in fact, an experience. I pity the U.S. moviegoers who went to see something called The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus and got this instead, on a double bill with The Manster, no less. They must have been perplexed.
Tagline: “Beautiful women were the victims of his FIENDISH FACIALS!!!”
AKA: The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus (U.S. release)
WTF Factor: ***
Notable Dialogue:
- Louise: “Calm down, my dear. Trust in him. I’m sure he’ll succeed.”
- Christiane: “He never will. He’ll keep experimenting on me like one of his dogs. A human guinea pig. What a godsend for him!”
- Louise: “You have no right to say that.”
- Christiane: “I want to die…please!”
Synopsis: Circus music, spooky landscape, credits. After a car ride a nervous woman dumps a woman’s body in the river. Meanwhile, Professor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) gives a lecture about heterografts (grafting tissue from one individual to another) and is called to the morgue to view a disfigured body. He identifies it as his daughter Christiane, who has been missing for several weeks.
Students exit from a University building and there’s that circus music again. The same woman from the car is stalking one of the students. At Christiane’s funeral, we discover that the mysterious woman is Génessier’s assistant Louise (Alida Valli) and we also meet Christiane’s fiancé Jacques (François Guérin), a doctor at Génessier’s clinic.
Génessier drives to an opulent villa, right next to his medical clinic in the suburbs. Many dogs are barking ominously behind the garage. Génessier climbs several flights of stairs to the top floor and finds Christiane (Edith Scob) lying face down on the bed. She has found her own death notice. Génessier insists that she must wear her mask. Louise says Génessier repaired her own face and will repair Christiane’s as well. Christiane blames dad for the car accident that disfigured her. The smooth, white mask that she wears is made of wax and only her eyes are visible.
Christiane: “My face frightens me. My mask frightens me even more.”
Christiane wanders the house in a dream-like state. She calls Jacques but hangs up when he answers. Louise befriends Edna Grüber (Juliette Mayniel), the student she is stalking, and offers her a room in the suburbs. She takes Edna there for a visit, although the girl is suspicious, particularly of the spooky woods around the villa. Génessier drugs Edna and they carry her to a secret operating room, with Christiane watching. The girl is strapped to a surgical table.
Christiane visits the dogs that are the subjects of her father’s experiments; they love her. We later see that the dogs don’t like Génessier and vice versa.
Christiane finds a mirror in the operating room and removes her mask. She stands over Edna and frightens her; we get a glimpse of Christiane’s severely disfigured face.
Génessier removes Edna’s face in graphic detail and grafts it onto Christiane (thankfully unseen).
For some reason they keep Edna alive. Edna returns the favor by conking Louise over the head and escaping into the villa.
She goes up and up the stairs to the top of the house and then goes out the window. Génessier and Louise hide her body in the family crypt. That’s not gonna smell good in a few days.
The police realized that all of the recently missing girls look alike. Meanwhile, Christiane’s new face looks great but Génessier realizes that the graft is being rejected. The skin slowly deteriorates over time and finally must be removed. The heterografts are successful in the dogs though.
Christiane calls Jacques again but says his name this time. He recognizes her voice. Christiane begs Louise to kill her, while Jacques goes to the police. He suspects Louise and Génessier of some sort of foul play.
There’s that circus music again, as Louise scouts the streets for another face donor. Meanwhile Paulette Mérodon (Béatrice Altariba) has been apprehended by the police for shoplifting. Paulette resembles the profile of the missing girls and the police convince her to check into Génessier’s clinic as a patient in order to get her charges dropped. [Sounds ethical.]
Génessier visits a sick child and he is very gentle and reassuring to the boy’s mother. Paulette checks out fine and is released from the hospital. Louise picks her up on the road while she’s walking to the bus stop. The next we see, Paulette is getting marked up for facial surgery, but the police arrive at the clinic since she didn’t make it home. She is in the operating room while Génessier walks to the clinic and proves that Paulette was released. Jacques apologizes to the police for his suspicions.
Paulette wakes up and she is not pleased. Christiane is watching her, then she releases Paulette. When Louise arrives, Christiane stabs her in the neck, which is surprisingly bloodless. Paulette watches in horror and then runs away. Christiane then goes to the dog pens and releases them. As Génessier is walking back, the most recent addition to the dog pack attacks him, then the entire pack goes after him. Génessier’s face gets chewed off.
Christiane doesn’t care. She releases a cage of doves one by one and then wanders off into the woods. Fin.
Thoughts: Eyes Without a Face is a masterful movie that frequently invokes a dream-like atmosphere, especially whenever Christiane is on screen. The casting and acting are impeccable, with Edith Scob (Christiane) doing an extraordinary job. Despite its current status as a classic, it was poorly received by the critics at the time of release. Perhaps the juxtaposition of the atmospheric photography and surreal elements with the hyper-realistic surgical scene was too jarring for immediate acceptance.
This could qualify as a horror movie just on the basis of the extended surgical scene, which is almost documentary in approach. The other direct moment of horror is when we and Edna get a glimpse of Christiane’s horribly scarred face (a reveal that seems unnecessary in the context of the movie). Aside from these scenes, the horror lies in contemplating how far a father will go to assuage his guilt over his daughter’s disfigurement. Or is Christiane correct near the end of the movie, when she asserts that her father is using her as a guinea pig for his own megalomania? There is an unsettling ambiguity to this question. It’s unclear how many times Christiane has been subjected to this procedure, but presumably more than once, if she is so discouraged.
The extraordinary beauty of many of Christiane’s scenes is another enigma in the movie.
She almost glides across the floors, visually aided by her long gowns. She is both a passive victim and a victimizer; she knows what her father and Louise are doing with the kidnappings and surgeries, and chooses not to object, until late in the movie, when she seems to snap mentally. The haunting vision of her gliding into the woods in the end, accompanied by the doves, is not likely to be forgotten long after the movie is over. What will become of her is anyone’s guess.
One striking element of the movie is the score by Maurice Jarre, who was just two years from his first Academy Award for Best Original Score (for Lawrence of Arabia (1962)). What I referred to earlier as “circus music” are the perky but off-kilter melodies used to signify Louise’s forays into procuring or disposing of victims. In strong contrast is the ethereal waltz music used in Christiane’s scenes. Even more noticeable, the music goes silent whenever Génessier is on screen. That silence increases the tension of scenes such as the surgery and when Génessier and Louise bury Edna.
This movie is rightfully a classic and is absolutely a must-view, when you are in the mood for something atmospheric and unique.
Random thoughts:
- Les Yeux Sans Visage was based on the novel of the same name by Jean Redon.
- Christiane’s stylish gowns were by Givenchy.
- John Carpenter has stated that this film was the inspiration for Michael Myers’ expressionless mask.
Suggested double feature: For a down-and-dirty take (rip-off) on the same theme, try Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962).
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “It Creeps… It Crawls… It Strikes Without Warning!”
