Eyes Without a Face (The Criterion Collection)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alida Valli, Edith Scob, François Guérin, Juliette Mayniel, Pierre BrasseurBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Eyes Without a Face (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Dissection of a masterpiece. Dvd features below
Summary: 5 Stars
In the book jacket of the criterion dvd producer Jules Borkon told director Georges Franju that in the film there would need to be blood. But not too much blood because of French censors, also no animal torture because it upsets the British, and no mad scientists, since the Germans are touchy about the whole Nazi doctor thing.
As Borkon handed Franju a script about a mad doctor that tortures animals while cutting off women's faces. Sound like a challenge?
Luckily this inspired Franju to step his game up to transcend what might have been a B horror movie into a masterpiece. Franju was also in good company on the film with the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac who were also the writing team that assisted Hitchcock on Vertigo and Clouzot on Diabolique. Cinematographer Eugen Schufftan to make Franjus vision of realism come to life, Schufftan who had also worked with Fritz Lang and Edgar Ulmer.
Eyes without a face is the story of a Dr. Génessier who is indeed a mad doctor but is not screaming It's Alive, It's Alive like Dr. Frankenstein. On the contrary unlike Dr. Frankenstein he isn't giving life but unknowingly taking his patient's life away. That patient is Christiane Génessie his own daughter whose face was left mangled after a car accident in which her father, as she states was driving insane as he always did.
Dr. Genessie now removes women's faces to transplant to his daughters so she can come from behind a eerie mask she is encouraged to wear. He does this with the help of Louise his assistant who is loyal to the Dr. for giving back her own face through surgery.
Patrick McGrath an author who did a write up on the Criterion case jacket states that the Dr. is not motivated by love but by guilt in creating these horrible acts. I personally did not see that, but a man who had lost his sole and was obsessed with the work itself, after thinking he finally made his daughters face perfect again he stated you can't put a price on that. Christiane herself told Louise that she is a godsend to him to have as a guinea pig as she pleaded for her to kill her. However the Dr. does show moments of being human when he helps a boy, this apparently is what angered our American censors who didn't mind the blood and carnage but giving the Dr. compassion was inexcusable and was one of the cuts made to the film originally.
The film as a horror movie is filed with dread, when a girl is lured back to the house of the Dr. and realizes she made a mistake I could see a lot of our torture films being influenced here like Hostel II for example. However Eyes without a face has motive and plot. And even for 1959 there are moments that make you squirm as the first realistic documentary style face removal, and after his daughter's successful face transplant goes wrong showing photos of her face's deterioration after different amounts of time elapse.
The film is also filled with metaphors and makes you think. For example if this surgery were for the good but horrible acts to a few had to happen in order to benefit many is that alright? Sounds a bit familiar.
Is Christiane's plastic mask symbolic for the masks people are encouraged to put on each day?
Perhaps it symbolizes the mask the director Franju was encouraged to put on this film and the struggle it must have been to rise above it as Christiane must rise up against the evil in her father.
Are parents that try to sculpt and mold their children into what they want because they think it's best are they stopping that child from really living?
I could go on and on, this is a great horror film and great film for any genre. As his film suggests beauty is only skin deep but directors like Franju show how deep a genre hated by many critics such as horror can go.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New Restored HD transfer (looked pristine
-Blood of the Beasts, Franju's 1949 short doc about the slaughterhouses of Paris
-Archival interviews w/ Franjo on horror, cinema, and the making of blood of the beasts
-Excert from les grands peres du crime, a doc features eyes without a faces writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Diabolique, Vertigo)
-Theatrical Trailers
-Stills gallery of rare production photos and promo material
-New essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and writer and film historian David Kalat (which i refer to throughout the review)
Summary of Eyes Without a Face (The Criterion Collection)
Secluded in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore his beloved daughter?s once-beautiful face, but at a horrifying price. Lauded as a true rarity of horror cinema, Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans visage) has influenced countless films in its wake and stunned audiences around the world with its shocking yet poetic imagery. The Criterion Collection is proud to present Georges Franju?s lyrical black-and-white classic in a long-awaited, high-definition DVD edition.Similar DVD Movies
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