Faceoff Mais Oui

Title: Eyes Without A Face

Rating: 3 Stars

I have no idea how I even stumbled upon this film. It’s a pretty obscure French horror film from 1960. Even if obscure, it is part of the Criterion collection and has been cited as an influence on other films, so it’s not a completely random pick. 

The story features Dr Génessier. A couple of years ago, he lost his wife. Much more recently, he was apparently driving recklessly in a car with his daughter Christiane. He got into an accident. He was unscathed but Christiane was horribly injured. In fact, she essentially lost her face (?!).

For some untold reason, Dr Génessier decides to keep her disfigurement a secret. Instead he resolves to give her a new face (?!). Luckily for all, the good doctor specializes in heterograft surgeries (?!).

The good doctor has an Igor named Louise. She goes out and recruits unsuspecting women to come visit the doctor’s home. There, they kill the woman and then carve off her face and try to transplant it onto the daughter. Unfortunately, the skin grafts eventually are rejected and they need to find another victim.

Meanwhile, the police are getting understandably suspicious about a recent spate of missing women. The doctor falls under suspicion. Will the police be able to save the latest victim? Will Christiane ever be able to look in a mirror again?

This is quite the film. First things first. When it was released in 1960, it was shocking. People fainted watching it. Now we’re in the year 2021 in the era of the Saw franchise. If that’s your frame of reference, the face transplant probably appears pretty mild. However, if you can somehow put yourself in the time of 1960, you will understand the hullabaloo. It very graphically shows the doctor taking a scalpel and carving the victim’s face. Blood flows. With forceps, he carefully peels off the victim’s face. Given the time, it is a pretty seriously disturbing scene. I can’t think of a similar film from that time that is as graphic.

If you’re looking for a film that might have been inspired by it, I can’t help but think about the John Woo kinda insane Face/Off film. In this film, characters played by two of the all time great scene chewers, John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, undergo surgery to swap each other’s faces. It’s as crazy as it sounds. Comparing the process of face removal between the two films, they seem very similar.

Christiane, while waiting for a new face, goes around in a fairly lifelike mask. As I was watching it, it reminded me of the mask that Tom Cruise wore (he lost his face in a car accident too!) in Vanilla Sky. Intentional or not, Eyes Without A Face got there first.

In the plot department, in case you’re worried that it’s not insane enough, it gets a bit more insane. A young woman is arrested for the apparently heinous crime of…shoplifting. The police threaten to throw the book at her unless she agrees to go undercover and offer herself up as a potential victim of the doctor. He almost succeeds in carving off her face. The police puts an untrained woman in a dangerous situation so that she can avoid a shoplifting punishment? What is it, a fine? Pay the fine, lady!

The only disappointment is the actor playing the doctor. This is a great role that could have been the next Frankenstein. Traumatized by grief and guilt, he becomes obsessed with somehow assuaging that by ‘fixing’ his daughter, even if that means killing several other young woman. I’d imagine that this has all kinds of acting possibilities. Instead, the doctor is played flat. If he’s at all concerned about how his life got to the point that it has and the choices that he’s made to get there, he keeps it all hidden. He just has a very quiet determination. I would have liked to see a bit more spark in the performance.

So, yes, not a tremendously awesome film, but I was entertained and found it interesting to watch. If you’re interested in horror and want to see a fairly early French entry, this could be the film for you.