CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

jadavix "Eyes Without a Face" disappointed me. Its plot is exceedingly familiar. How many movies are there about evil doctors claiming victims for shadowy experiments? How many are there about doctors claiming victims for just this reason, rebuilding the face or body of their daughter, wife, sister, or whomever? I know, you're probably thinking that this idea may have been original in the '50s. Considering this, you start looking for signs that the movie at least told the story better than the 1001 rip offs that came after it.But if it did, that's hardly a point of pride, since this story was mostly used by b-filmmakers like Jess Franco.It's perhaps marginally better than most of its rip offs. The only really indelible image is the girl in the mask. The movie has no suspense or tension or anything like that.It is worth noting that the movie seems to have been recognized in its day mainly for its violence, which still seems shocking for a movie made in the '50s. This is worth noting because all the rip offs that came later totally out did it on that score, as you can imagine.Therefore, you may wonder what the point of this original version is?

disinterested_spectator In "Eyes Without a Face," mad scientist Docteur Génessier, whose specialty is transplanting tissue from one person to another, is working to overcome the tendency of the recipient to reject the foreign tissue. He also has a practical purpose, which is grafting a new face on his daughter, Christiane, who was disfigured in an automobile accident that was his fault. His Igor is Louise, whose disfigured face was restored by Génessier, for which reason she is extremely loyal to him and willing to aid him in his evil doings. In particular, Louise picks up young women who look the way Christiane did before her disfigurement, takes them to Génessier's house so he can remove their faces and transplant them onto Christiane. Unfortunately, he has thus far been unsuccessful, the result of which is that a bunch of dead women's bodies without faces keep turning up, all of whom seem to be of the same physical type. In fact, we see Louise dump one such woman into a river at the beginning of the movie. One way in which all the women are similar is that they all have blue eyes. Now, this makes no sense, because Christiane's eyes are fine, hence the title: she has the eyes; what she needs is a face. So why the women whose faces are being removed have to have blue eyes is a mystery.Génessier identifies the woman found in the river as his daughter so that people, including her boyfriend Jacques, a doctor who works in Génessier's clinic, will think she is dead and not wonder where she is, for only Génessier, Louise, and Christiane know of her horribly burned face. In the meantime, Christiane wears a mask around the house so as not to gross everyone out including herself. The mask is an immobile version of what she used to look like. One of the amazing things about this mask, which allows us a clear view of her eyes, is how expressive her "face" is. We have all heard the expression, "The eyes are a window to the soul." This movie really demonstrates it. We get a good sense of what Christiane is feeling and thinking as she walks around the house owing only to the expressiveness of her eyes.Louise's next victim is Edna. She tricks her into getting into the car with her, and the next thing you know, Edna is strapped to the operating table having her face lifted, so to speak. We actually get a glimpse of her face after the skin has been removed, squarely placing this film into the category of Grand Guignol. At first the transplant seems to be a success, but eventually it becomes necrotic and has to be removed again. Back on goes the mask. For some reason, Génessier keeps Edna alive, as if he is doing her a favor, but she leaps to her death. Adding to the creepiness of this movie are all the big, howling dogs Génessier has locked up in small cages to be used for his transplant experiments.One of Edna's friends reports her missing. She tells the police about the woman that Edna said she was going somewhere with, but all she can say by way of identification is that Edna said the woman wore a pearl choker (Louise wears a choker to hide the scar on her neck). Later, Jacques receives a strange phone call from Christiane, who misses him terribly. She only utters his name, but he recognizes her voice. He goes to the police, and when Inspector Parot mentions the pearl choker in passing, Jacques thinks of Louise. As a result, she and Dr. Génessier become suspects.A woman named Paulette, who fits the profile of missing girls, blue eyes and all, is picked up by the police for shoplifting. Parot and another inspector threaten her with prosecution unless she acts as a decoy. She agrees to go to Génessier's clinic and fake an illness. And here is the point in the movie where police incompetence becomes so absurd that it is laughable. Do they have a plainsclothes officer watching the clinic to see what happens to her when she is discharged? No. And so, when Paulette is released late at night and walks down the street to get a bus, she is offered a ride by Louise and accepts. Too bad nobody is around to see her get in the car.Jacques calls Inspector Parot to let him know Paulette has left the clinic. Parot concludes that this puts Génessier and Louise in the clear, since they obviously did not kidnap Paulette, but let her leave the clinic instead. However, Parot decides to make sure she got home all right. Gosh! She never got home. So the two inspectors drive out to Génessier's clinic just to be sure. They ask Génessier if Paulette was released from clinic. Yes she was, he tells them. The inspectors shrug and go home, concluding it was just a false trail and the choker was just one big coincidence.Before Paulette's face can be peeled off, Christiane releases her from the table, stabs Louise in the neck right through the choker, and releases the dogs, who then go after Génessier, ripping half his face off. Christiane wanders off into the woods with one of the doves she also released perched on her hand, just to give the movie a little symbolism. You see, this is a French film, so you can't expect it to make sense the way a Hollywood production would.

Scarecrow-88 A surgical genius (also a physician of a successful hospital) and his assistant secretly abduct, drug, and take the faces of certain girls who have specific characteristics similar to a girl considered vanished by the police after a horrific car wreck that mangled her face. This girl is the surgeon's daughter, and he was the reason the wreck happened in the first place. Feeling a strong guilt for "ruining" his daughter's face, it drives him to use his own "grafting techniques" in the hopes of giving her a new face, at the cost of other girls who look like her. When a victim's body turns up in the Sienne (dumped there by the assistant), the surgeon claims it is his daughter, providing him room to continue his work unabated. When one kidnapped girl's face is removed (a Swedish girl visiting Paris in the hopes of making something of herself), there's hope that this will be the success that has eluded the surgeon; when the victim jumps out of a window as it appeared she would never escape without further harm, once again the police are confronted with the idea of a serial killer. A third woman, similar to the two other victims, caught shoplifting, is essentially blackmailed by the police to help them catch the killer; the detail of a pearl necklace by a witness (friend of the window-leaping Swedish girl) initiates an eye on the assistant of the surgeon (who wears the necklace to hide her neck scar; she herself was a facially-scarred patient that had successful repairs by the surgeon, explaining her devotion to him).The white mask and glassy eyes, and how Christiane (Edith Scob) has movements of a spectre, very mannequin like in appearance, nearly a lost soul due to all she has endured (pops responsible for taking the faces of girls unapologetically; the flesh not taking to her face and staying healthy without deterioration; having to hole up in the home, not allowed to leave), her character and look is very iconic, very distinctive and memorable. The final act (with irony in regards to her father's face, and how the release of dogs and pigeons mirrors her own newfound freedom), where it is Christiane who stops the killers, her father (Pierre Brasseur) and his assistant, Louise (Alida Valli; Senso), not the police, is fitting. Edna's chapter is just heart-breaking. The image series where the flesh of the "replacement face" taken from Edna for Christiane itself is unsuccessful further emphasizes just why the poor girl is driven into madness. She is in her own personal hell that gradually affects her mental wellbeing, causing a decline that erupts at the end. A surgery of Edna is shown in some grisly detail; matter-of-fact and coldly detached from how horrible it is, the surgeon commits totally to the process. The opening drive by Louise with a dead body in her car's back seat, intently focused on finding just the right "dumping ground" is quite an unsettling beginning due to how business-as-usual it feels…as if a routine that Louise has done before. Score is at times whimsical almost as preparing us for a Buster Keaton silent comedy, quite unexpected when compared to what scene it is applied to is actually developing before us. Valli's devotion to Brasseur is one of the disturbing details that proves that a repaired face could be perhaps a fair trade for helping to dispose of bodies. The surgeon's stone-faced, clinical behavior and ability to cut himself off from his misdeeds shows that no matter what crimes he commits, his grafting expertise for his daughter takes precedence over a few lives taken.

Steve Pulaski The opening of Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) shows a young woman named Louise (Alida Valli), the assistant to the brilliant, renowned surgeon Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), dumping a body in the river, who Dr. Génessier later identifies as his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob). Christiane's face was horribly disfigured following a car accident, and following her funeral, we realize she is still living under the care of her father, with a plain, white mask over her face. Her father, who owns his own clinic right next door to their home, is trying to restore the beauty of Christiane's face by sending his assistant to find and befriend young, attractive women so that they can be kidnapped, taken to his clinic, and stripped of their own face to be surgically placed on Christiane's. One day, Louise finds Edna Grüber (Juliette Mayniel), an attractive, young Parisian woman who looks to be a perfect match for Christiane. Upon drugging her and taking her back to Génessier's home, the process of stripping Edna of her face and applying it to Christiane's begins in a horribly gruesome way.From that premise alone, many potential viewers of Eyes Without a Face will be turned off and never look in the film's direction again. What they'll fail to see, however, is how remarkably beautiful of a film this is. Despite its grotesque premise, director Georges Franju keeps the film on a quiet scale, conducting everything in a softly poetic manner, relying on the essences provided by Eugen Schüfftan's black and white cinematography to carry the film. This atmosphere makes the film a decidedly artful venture, showcasing the lavish scenery and costume designs of those involved rather than making the film entirely about shock and awe.Admittedly, there is gruesomeness to be found in Eyes Without a Face, and the level in which it's employed is pretty strong, especially given the time period in which it was made. Franju handles the gore in a way that makes the film more about the process than the actual shock; with such a frightening and depraved premise, one expects the film to be filled to the brim with completely nonsensical ugliness and gross-out schtick. Thankfully, the driving force behind the film knows how he wants everything to be executed, and that's not in the way of bargain basement shock. Franju creates an impact that's potentially everlasting on the viewer, creating a film that's equal parts carefully-executed French drama and classic American monster movie.I liken Franju's film to an American monster film not only because of its atmosphere, but its buildup and execution. At only ninety-minutes, Eyes Without a Face is conservative in its narrative pacing and relatively slowburn in its structure. Franju hooks us early on by painting the picture of a clearly intelligent and thoughtful doctor, but one who is also not mentally stable. We then see Franju change gears to give his daughter's perspective on her treatment, living a now secret life confined to a white mask and her father's clinic, struggling to keep her own mental stability. Then we cut to Louise's manipulative, thankless task, and so on; Franju structures the film in layers, giving us suspense before providing us with an execution similar to a monster movie. We get a lot of tension before the instance we've been waiting for finally occurs, and through that, the same kind of emotions and feelings arise.Eyes Without a Face comes at the pivotal time in French cinema when a new wave was underway. The longstanding "tradition of quality," where older directors made films for an older crowd, reiterating common values and traditionalist principles, was being demolished by younger, more radical directors who were motivated by watching a great deal of subversive films from all over the world and wanted to profile the kind of ideas they beared and they felt. These ideas were often politically-charged (a great deal of the 1960's work of Jean-Luc Godard), autobiographical works (several early works of François Truffaut), and films that simply broke every convention in French cinema at the time (specifically Godard's Breathless). Franju previously was a documentarian, making films concerning Paris industry, one about a slaughterhouse and another about the modernization of the city. Eyes Without a Face was his first film to deviate from his forte, and what amounted as a result was a great deal of critical indecisiveness about what kind of path Franju was attempting to forge with this new direction. Despite all of the criticism he received, Franju responded quaintly, saying the purpose was to give simple genre films like this some credibility, showing that they can break new ground and give us something to talk about just as much as any documentary could.Eyes Without a Face is a masterclass of suspense and terror, and remains a revolutionary work of not only French horror, but French cinema in general.Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli, and Juliette Mayniel. Directed by: Georges Franju.