Eyes without a Face - film review

Art Gallery NSW - Identity series
French - 84 minutes

In this 1959-60s original black and white French film, a talented and highly respected professor/surgeon, Doctor Génessie (Pierre Brasseur) has dedicated his life work to experimenting on animals to pioneer a medical breakthrough in human transplant. He has a motive however, as a night of reckless behaviour killed his wife and seriously disfigured his only daughter Christine's (Edit Scob) face in a car accident. Desperate to restore his daughter former beauty and alleviate his guilt, his secretary Louise (Alida Valli) conspires with Génessie to kidnap suitable young ladies into the surgeon's lair. Louise is also a grateful recipient of Génessie's handiwork.

Despite successful experiments on a multitude of dogs, Louise is his only human success to date. The many attempts at facial grafts from the victims to Christine all end in failure. With each failure Génessie becomes more sadistic and obsessive, neglecting Christine's pleas to stop.

The surgeries take it toll on Christine as seemingly she is destined to live her life behind a mask. She begs Louise to kill her with the tranquiliser they use on the dog experiments though she refuses. Génessie and Louise are lost in a world on the edge of madness.

In an iconic expressly graphic scene where Génessie slowly and methodically removes the face of one of his "donors", minutes  afterward the film stopped and the lighting went up. Someone in the audience had literally fainted. A phenomenon has reports back to the film's release in the 1960s.

Filmed in a classic Hollywood linear sequence unusual for French films of this era, Eyes without a Face, is spine chillingly drama both visually and emotionally. Though it has overtones of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, it pushes the boundaries of pseudo-realism much further. A man on the edge striving to maintain control, this film is also steeped in metaphors of science versus life that is just as relevant today. 

A must see for anyone with a strong constitution and a moral sense of poetic justice.