by Everett Jensen

Created on: April 06, 2010

Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face)

directed by Georges Franju

written by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac

starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Edith Scob, Juliette Mayniel, François Guérin, Alexandre Rignault, Beatrice Altariba

A desperate doctor uses heterograft surgery from the faces of captured girls so his darling daughter can have her face given back to her after a horrific accident.

Dr. Génessier (Brasseur) is a wealthy physician who lives in a large mansion with his daughter Christiane (Scob) and dozens of dogs and a number of doves.  Dr. Génessier conducts experiments on the animals in his lab which is located adjacent to his home.  A while back he was driving too fast with Christiane and smashed his car leaving her horribly disfigured.  As the film opens she must wear a mask as her father promises her he will be able to fix her face. 

We first meet Dr. Génessier ‘s assistant Louise (Valli) as she is drivingwith a corpse in her backseat which she disposes of in a river.  This would be the body of one of Génessier’s patients who didn’t survive the ordeal of having her face removed.  

The film is extraordinarily poetic throughout as the camera captures a specific wondrous mood infused with a real sense of magic that permeates every frame of the film.  It is a sweetly melancholy story that comes alive whenever Edith Scob is on the screen.  Although she spends most of the film behind a mask Scob provides the film with a grace that is impossible to forget.  In one of her earlier scenes she gets up wearing one of costume designer Marie Martine’s exquisite concoctions.  She seems to float about the room and as she descends the stairs she possesses a genuine sense of mysterious allure that is accentuated strangely by her emotionless mask.  It remains in a fixed place and yet one is intoxicated with the sublime beauty of this creature and indeed of the mask.

This is certainly a film that retains a dreamlike quality throughout.  One becomes wholly intoxicated with the sheer glamor inherent in scenes where Christiane is present.  She has such a frailty about her that it’s easy to imagine her bones cracking into fragments.  Yet, emotionally and morally she is exceedingly strong which she demonstrates in the film’s final scenes.  
Fixing Christiane means that the good Doctor needs specimens and this grand

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