Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without A Face) [VHS] [1960]

Classic of the genre, an essential for all cinephiles, inspired so many...

Curious and dark film which is perhaps more of a curiosity than anything now, but the cinematography is brilliant and innovative

"Eyes Without a Face" ("Les Yeux sans visage") is a horror film in which there is certain sympathy with the mad doctor, in this case Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) who is trying to repair the horrible damage to his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) in a car accident that was his fault. The doctor, helped by his assistant Louise (Alida Valli), has been kidnapping young girls so that he can remove their skin and graft it onto Christiane's ruined face. Not only do the victims die, but the grafts fail, forcing Genessier to try again and again and again. What makes Georges Franju's film work is the inherent sympathy we feel towards the father trying to make his daughter beautiful again, just as we are repulsed by the surgical procedures he uses. Meanwhile, Genessier remains oblivious to what his efforts are doing to Christiane's own tenuous hold on reality."Eyes Without a Face" moves back and forth from the sacred and the profane, between the love of a parent for a child and meaningless destruction of human life. Franju conveys this contrast visually through the use of poetic images and realistic scenes. I have read arguments that "Eyes Without a Face" should be considered with "Psycho" as creating the splatter flick, and while it is hard to imagine anything having the impact of Hitchcock's film, Franju's movie is more artistic overall (of course, the shower scene is the master trump when we talk about horror films as "art"). This black & white French film with English subtitles is well worth seeing and could end up on your personal top 10 horror film list.The "Eyes Without a Face" translation is the British title for this 1959 release, which was called "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus" when released in the United States in 1962, in what must be one of the stupidest titles grafted onto a foreign film in cinema history. Here you have a film that walks a fine line between beautiful visual images, such as when Christiane walks through the house in her mask, and viseral horror, represented by not just the operation scenes but the film's climax. The title is simple and elegant, not to mention appropriate to the story being told, and some suit who heard about Christopher Marlowe while reading an E.C. comic comes up with "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus." Mon dieu, mon ami!

Unfortunately I can't comment on the film as I was unable to watch it. I'm a monolingual Brit and, as much as I would like to speak fluent French, I can't. I was very much looking forward to watching 'Les yeux sans visage', knowing full well it's a French horror masterpiece. I expected a Region 2 DVD to contain subtitles. It was a foolish assumption on my part.For what it's worth I'd argue that, no matter the quality of the movie, £12 is pretty steep for a DVD with nothing but a 'play film' feature on the menu.I'm sure there's an edition of the film out there which will offer me subtitles.