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?

mcalister_tyler This film is very well done, it's definitely an older movie which shows in the pacing and the very basic cinematography. I watched this film all the way through and what I found was that the story was great! Very basically told but entertaining to watch, I don't know that I would call it a horror film, its more of a thriller with the elements in it. It's a very fine line to draw between thrillers and horror films. The actress behind Christiane was wonderful at portraying her character's emotions from behind the mask, I only wish that we spent more time with her and learned more about her as a character as she was probably the most entertaining part of the film. I found myself getting annoyed by the soundtrack that was used repeatedly throughout the film when someone was being stalked. The transitions between scenes grew rather tiresome but its expected of an older film. Overall, the film may have dragged a little at parts, the soundtrack can be annoying, but the story and characters make it entertaining to where its hardly noticeable, excellent film, definitely recommend.

BA_Harrison Eyes Without A Face stars Pierre Brasseur as renowned French surgeon Docteur Génessier, who tries in vain to restore his daughter Christiane's beauty after a car-crash leaves her horribly disfigured. With the help of his devoted assistant Louise (Alida Valli), the doctor abducts young women, grafting their faces onto Christiane, with little success.Highly regarded by many horror connoisseurs, director Georges Franju's macabre mad-scientist classic benefits from a truly cruel villain in Docteur Génessier, who not only mutilates innocent girls, but isn't above tormenting one victim's father (by denying him the right to his daughter's body at the morgue), and treating Christiane like a guinea pig in his experiments. Eyes Without A Face also features some impressive early gore (albeit in black and white), with the surgical removal of a girl's face shown in unflinching detail, and grisly deaths for Louise and Docteur Génessier, who ultimately receive poetic justice.For me, though, the film is just a little too lethargic to be a wholly satisfying experience, the 'haunting' scenes with Christiane in her smooth rubber mask a tad repetitive and a little too much time spent where nothing much of interest occurs. Overall, it's a reasonably entertaining piece, but not as great as its reputation would have one believe.

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.