Film Review
It was the resurgence of interest in horror in European cinema in the
late 1950s, spearheaded by the British film company Hammer, that led
independent French film producer Jules Borkon to purchase the rights to
Jean Redon's novel
Les Yeux sans
visage.
Horror was a genre that had been almost completely
neglected by French cinema since the medium had been invented, the only
significant offerings being
Jean Epstein's
La Chute de la maison Usher
(1928) and Carl Theodor Dreyer's
Vampyr
(1932), the latter of which had been a box office failure. Borkon was eager to
cash in on the latest horror boom but made the slightly bizarre
decision to hire Georges Franju to direct his film. Franju, one
of the founders of the Cinémathèque Française, had
made a number of documentary shorts and one full-length film, the
uncompromising social drama
La Tête contre les murs
(1959), but was by no means an established filmmaker. As it
turned out, Franju was the ideal choice because of his completely fresh
perspective, and he delivered what is widely considered the finest
horror film in French cinema.
There is no other film like
Les Yeux
sans visage. It is strikingly different from other
fantasy-horror films of the period, having neither the Gothic feel of
Hammer's horror films or the sensual Baroque quality seen in
Italian horror films, such as those of Mario Bava. The visual
style can be described as Cocteau-esque expressionism, combining the
classic film noir aesthetic (high contrast chiaroscuro photography
and disorientating camera positioning) with a haunting fairytale-like
lyricism that is so quintessentially French. The film's dreamlike
texture owes much to its cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, whose
previous credits include the Siodmak brothers'
People on Sunday (1930) and
G.W. Pabst's
L'Atlantide (1932).
(Schüfftan was famous as the inventor of the effect, first
employed on Friz Lang's
Metropolis, which placed actors
into miniature sets through the use of mirrors.)
It is the subtly expressionistic quality that Schüfftan brings to the film
(complemented by Maurice Jarre's eerie score) which makes it so
unremittingly creepy and amplifies the mild horror content to
frightening proportions. This is as much Schüfftan's film as
it is Franju's, and some would argue that Schüfftan had by far the
greater creative input (a point of view that carries some weight when
you consider Franju's subsequent films, all inferior to this one).
One thing that concerned producer Borkon was the climate of film
censorship that prevailed in Europe at that time. Even though
Franju and his screenwriters (Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac) were
careful not to include content that would be deemed unacceptable by the
censors, the film still managed to provoke enormous controversy in
every country in which it was shown. It is reported that at a
screening in Edinburgh some members of the audience fainted in sheer
fright. Criticism in the press ranged from enthusiastic approval
to outright disgust. There is next to no explicit horror in the
film (and certainly nothing like the gore offered by Hammer and Bava),
yet the sequence in which Pierre Brasseur occupies himself with the
removal of a human face from a living donor has become one of the most
notorious in film history.
Les Yeux sans visage differs
from virtually all other films in the fantasy-horror genre. It
doesn't set out to shock us with gruesome images or insult our
intelligence with an implausible plot or fantastic characters.
Everything it shows us is frighteningly plausible, but presented to us
in a dreamlike manner which, if anything, softens the horror of the
situation. Crucially, it is not evil which provides the stimulus
for the horror, but love, the love of a father determined to give his
daughter back her life. In the end, it is the film's haunting
poetry, not its horror connotations, which have the deepest impact on
the spectator. This is not a film about mad scientists or
demonically possessed villains doing unspeakable acts. Rather, it
is about the choices that have to made in the name of love, choices
which may make us heroes or the unwitting servants of Satan.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Georges Franju film:
Pleins feux sur l'assassin (1961)
Film Synopsis
Professor Genessier, once a great surgeon, is now consumed with his overriding
obsession - to restore the features of his beloved daughter Christiane.
It is some years since the terrible car accident in which the professor's
daughter was hideously disfigured, but the professor still hasn't forgiven
himself. Only Christiane's eyes are undamaged - the rest of her face
is scarred beyond recognition. Driven by guilt, Genessier devotes himself
night and day to the task of restoring his daughter to her former beauty.
He believes he has perfected a way of doing this, by grafting skin tissue
taken from healthy donors onto Christiane's damaged face.
Confident he will achieve his objective, Genessier throws himself into his
diabolical scheme in earnest, assisted by his faithful secretary Louise.
Finding suitable donors and luring them to Genessier's isolated house proves
to be the easy part of the operation. Young women are so gullible these
days, so easily led to their doom. Far more difficult is the process
of removing the victim's faces and transplanting the skin - the first attempts
prove to be disheartening failures. The problem of tissue rejection
is one that Genessier struggles to overcome.
But, undeterred by his countless failures, the professor persists, confident
that in the end he must succeed. But as he does so he fails to take
account of the psychological impact all this is having on Christiane.
As her hopes are raised and dashed in quick succession, she becomes increasingly
revolted by her father's insane pursuit. Finally, she is driven to
get in touch with her former fiancé Jacques, hoping that someone will
put an end to her living nightmare. Meanwhile, in the safety of his
secret laboratory, Professor Genessier continues slicing up the faces of
young women with ever-increasing fervour...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.