A goal of my Horror Reviews is to have diversity. There are many different kinds of horror movie made over a century by an entire planet of humans. It would be so easy to just pick thirty-one American gore movies from the Eighties and call it a month. But I want to stretch myself, and I want to stretch you. Of course, that also means not all my experiments will be successful. There are kinds of movies I just don't like.
Eyes Without a Face is a classic French black and white horror movie. In terms of genre, it lies somewhere between gothic horror and the proto-slasher movies of the early Sixties (Peeping Tom, Psycho). This is the kind of movie you get assigned to watch in film school. It is the movie you study with respect, but not the movie you love or much enjoy. Handsome and full of production value, it still is slow and not very scary.
Eyes Without a Face is a movie where we watch a character walk up three flights of stairs in real time. You can admire the clever camera angles and the emotional mood of the cinematography. But you're still watching five minutes of a guy walking up stairs. Eyes Without a Face is movie for filmmakers in need of inspiration, not audiences in need of entertainment. While I really admire a movie like this, it just isn't my tempo. I need more character work and more kills. Psycho is more my speed.
The plot is about Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), a respected surgeon experimenting with face transplants. What the world does not know is that he is also a serial killer that kidnaps women to cut their faces off. His goal is to give his daughter, Christiane (Édith Scob), a new face. Her original was destroyed in a car accident while her dad was driving. Christiane now wanders her father's castle in a white mask, losing touch with humanity and losing hope for a future. Every new face her father gives her slowly rots due to transplant rejection.
There is some great horror imagery in Eyes Without a Face. Christiane's mask is a pearl-white cast of her original face, but without any emotion. All you see are her two sad eyes cut out on this empty void of a person. We do see under Christiane's mask one time with a blur effect. She looks better with the mask on. Eyes Without a Face has some gore too, which is remarkable for 1960. We see Dr. Génessier's surgically remove a young woman's face. Black blood pools out of his incisions. Christiane's face rotting looks awesome, I wish that had been more of a focus for the movie. Finally the movie ends with hungry dogs devouring a person. You can see the results in just one frame and it is not pleasant.
Plus, Eyes Without a Face is shot in some beautiful parts of France. The castles and mansions of the upper class give the movie a lot of production value. There are some wide shots in Paris and over highways. The usual American B-movie of the time just does not have that kind of scale or sense of reality. Nor do they have the somber sadness that this movie can create in Christiane's isolation or Génessier's deranged obsession. Roger Corman would give you a more fun movie though.
Also, American horror movies have a better score too. Eyes Without a Face's music is terrible. It is the most goofy, carnival-ass music. Does not work at all with the dark gothic framing this movie is attempting.
Next Time: Psycho II (1983). And yes, there was a Psycho II.
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