The Most Influential Horror Movie You Haven’t Seen Has Come To Criterion
If you haven’t seen Eyes Without a Face, here’s your chance.
“He’s changed since his daughter vanished. He says such strange things,” says a woman attending the lecture of Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur). And she’s right. The physician simply hasn’t been the same, speaking of radical new medical advancements that could have great promise—if only they weren’t so deadly. To his patients and admirers, he’s become increasingly distant. That’s because he’s become increasingly consumed by his missing daughter.
The police find a body in the river that has a unique identifier; like Genessier’s daughter, the woman’s eyes are the only part of her face still intact. Dismayed, he accepts it's his daughter and holds a funeral, hoping that he can obtain closure. Except it’s all a lie: Genessier’s daughter isn’t missing at all. He’s locked her away in his mansion while he tries to develop a procedure to graft someone else's face onto hers. And he’ll stop at nothing to restore his daughter, no matter how many times he has to try his radical and experimental surgery.
If it sounds like I’ve spoiled the enormously influential horror movie Eyes Without A Face for you, fear not. This twist is revealed within the first 20 minutes of Georges Franju’s masterpiece, and there are plenty more to come. With the film getting a brand new home entertainment release in vivid 4K from Criterion, there’s no better time to watch it.
Christiane (Édith Scob), Genessier’s daughter, was horrifically injured in a car accident with Genessier at the wheel, instilling in him an unshakable guilt. Christiane is imprisoned by her father, unable to live as she once did until her face can be repaired. She’s forced to wear a blank white mask that covers all but her eyes. It’s deeply unsettling, but it's a genius choice by Franju, as it forces us to imagine the potential horrors that sit underneath Christiane’s mask. Pairing the mask with Scob’s sensitive, quiet performance as she floats through her father’s mansion, conveying so much anguish through her body language, creates an indelibly haunting effect. And Eyes Without A Face is nothing if not extremely unsettling.
How was Eyes Without A Face Received Upon Release?
On initial release, audiences were downright terrified of Eyes Without A Face. A particular surgical moment (that I won’t spoil) had audiences “dropped like flies” according to French newspaper L’Express. At a screening at the 1960 Edinburgh Film Festival, there were reports that seven spectators fainted during that same scene, in which Franju gave a legendarily snarky response: “Now I know why Scotsmen wear skirts.”
In America, the film was dubbed, edited, and retitled as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus and released in 1962. The film attempted to humanize Genessier, adding scenes that had him caring for a young child at his clinic. It also cut some of the more intense moments of the pivotal surgery scene. The film’s release was very limited, placed in a double bill with another horror, The Manster. French reaction was muted to negative on first release, but in a 1986 re-release it was significantly more positive, with the editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinêma giving the film hefty praise.
Why Is Eyes Without A Face Important to See Now?
Mutilated after a car accident, the young girl at the center of Eyes Without a Face is a haunting sight.
If you’ve not seen Eyes Without A Face before, you’ve certainly seen something that’s been influenced by it. Pedro Almodovar has cited Franju’s film as a key influence on his surgical thriller The Skin I Live In. One of the most disturbing scenes in the movie is echoed in John Woo’s action classic Face/Off. And John Carpenter has even said that the film's mask inspired the featureless mask worn by Michael Myers in the Halloween franchise. Its reach goes even wider, no doubt impacting the work of body horror maestro David Cronenberg and countless others.
The reason Eyes Without A Face has made such a lasting impression is that beneath the terrifying and enticing story lies an eternal conundrum: Just how far would you go for the people you love? It’s a question mined to tremendous depth, and there’s a sense of melancholy and shame that lingers in every frame. It’s poetic, yet firmly grounded in reality. On a technical level, the film is a marvel. The visual effects are appropriately gnarly and ahead of their time. The eccentric score by three-time Oscar winner Maurice Jarre (who scored Lawrence of Arabia, among many others) is sparse yet powerful, featuring devilishly jaunty strings to create a palpable sense of unease. It recalls the zither score of The Third Man before taking things in an even creepier direction in the film’s second half. The film’s cinematography balances a stark reality with a chilling, dreamlike quality, full of intriguing black-and-white compositions.
What New Features Does the Eyes Without A Face 4K Blu-ray Have?
The 1960 movie has never looked better than in its new 4K restoration.
The film looks better than it ever has in this new 4K restoration, improving on an already impressive Criterion Blu-ray. The audio track, the same as the Blu-ray, is also great, and Jarre’s score comes across especially crisp, and dialogue is clear and well-rounded.
The special features are the same as the 2013 release, which, while robust, is slightly disappointing. A featurette on the film’s influence would have been most welcome, though what’s here is impressive and helps contextualize the film. The standout is Blood of the Beasts, Franju’s 1949 short documentary about Paris slaughterhouses, which contains much of the visual flair and eerie sensibilities found in Eyes Without A Face.
Here are the special features, per Criterion:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Blood of the Beasts, Georges Franju’s 1949 documentary about the slaughterhouses of Paris
- Archival interviews with Franju on the horror genre, cinema, and the making of Blood of the Beasts
- Interview with actor Edith Scob
- Excerpts from Les grand-pères du crime, a 1985 documentary about screenwriters Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
- Trailers
- Essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and film historian David Kalat
