Horrific Inquiry: EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960)

Welcome back to the scariest, and at times goriest, column here at Film Inquiry: Horrific Inquiry. Twice a month, I will be tackling all things horror, bringing two films back into the spotlight to terrify and frighten once more. And occasionally looking at those that could have pushed the envelope further. Join us as we dive deep into the heart of horror, but warning, there will be spoilers.

It’s amazing where the inspiration and selection of films for this column come from. Many times, it is currently what is streaming, the chance to revisit old favorites and discover new treasures is just a remote click away. This month, however, I found my selection in a gift I received over the summer – a horror film poster with scratch-off movie titles. I was excited to see how many films I had seen, as well as how many I still had yet to go. To both my surprise and delight, I have a lot more to watch. The thoughtfulness behind the poster has become the gift that keeps on giving, a new path of discovery laid out before me. And while it drives a desire to return to favorites I have watched endlessly, it has brought Horrific Inquiry to the perfect terrifying watch –  Georges Franju‘s Eyes Without a Face.

Eyes Without a Face was a film I had heard about over the years, its iconic image of Christiane (Edith Scob) in her mask was one I was quite familiar with. Yet, the story was one that has eluded me for years.

Crafting Horror and Tension

As Eyes Without a Face opens, there is an instant feeling of Carnival of Souls that takes hold. You can see and feel the potential influence the film might have had on the latter. It opens with the recognizable motion of a moving car, trees passing by and the camera moving up and down as though passing over a bumpy road. As the opening credits run through, the score from composer Maurice Jarre takes on a carnival feel, playful yet coyly villainous. The score, as we discover, will accompany the driver each and every time we see her, its carnival-core turning macabre.

As the film moves away from an opening credit feel, the camera finally introduces us to our rider. In a slightly reminiscent feel of Marion Crane in Psycho, we watch the distressed driver making her way through the cover of the night. We see her escorting a passenger as she turns her rearview mirror, the mysterious individual slumped and hidden by a cloak. It is here the film first establishes the feeling of the audience craning to see the accident. We want to see who the person is, to know what part they are playing. This feeling is both heightened and briefly rewarded as a small glimpse reveals both that the mysterious passenger may not only be dead but also sporting a mutilated face. Our suspicions are confirmed as the driver pulls the dead body out, dragging its lifeless corpse and throwing it into the river.

This is one of the tools the film utilizes to enhance its tension. Constantly, Eyes Without a Face feels like an accident on the side of the road, everyone craning their necks to see the carnage. This feels especially present in the moments the camera keeps us from seeing Christiane’s face when we are initially introduced to her. The camera toys with its audience in a tantalizing yet anxiety-causing way that builds anticipation for the big reveal later on in the film. Eyes Without a Face also increases this anxiety-induced tension with the long strides of its characters. Many times throughout the film, characters are shown walking through the house, making their way to the potential horror one foot at a time. While the camera angles will change, the real-time movement does not and it drives and literally crafts a need to see where they are going – what they are going to find.

After the disposal of the body, Eyes Without a Face transitions to a medical lecture, immediately juxtaposing the two sides of science – the side that is presented to us and the side that is hidden. While Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) speaks to the benefits of regenerative tissues, we as an audience begin to speculate the connection between the body moments ago and the experiments the doctor is engaged in. As he completes his lecture, he is called in by the police in an attempt to identify a body that was discovered in the river. Having lost his daughter months early, it is believed that she has finally been found. As members of the audience, we are once again not allowed to see the body, the discussions of a mutilated face the only description we have to work with. We know it is the body from the beginning of the film, and it works to heighten our anticipation as Eyes Without a Face works forward.

It also works towards our understanding that the good Doctor is lying as he identifies the young woman as his daughter Christiane. As he leaves, the police comment on how much he has changed since his daughter went missing. For them, he is a man in mourning. We as an audience are about to discover his is rather a man obsessed. As the doctor makes his way home, we discover that Christaine has not died and never has been missing. Suffering from severe mutilation to her face following an accident, her father has fallen into a controlled madness to bring her back to her former beauty. For months, he has been experimenting, searching for away to transplant another woman’s face onto Christiane.

Levels of Moral Ambiguity

Eyes Without a Face works to build levels of moral ambiguity within its trifecta in Christiane, Doctor Génessier and Edna (Juliette Mayniel) – our driver in the film’s beginning and the doctor’s henchman. Each plays their part willingly in the attempt to regenerate Christiane, each responding differently with every step deeper into the madness required to achieve their goal. For Doctor Génessier he is the furtherest gone. Driven by pride and obsession, there is nothing he won’t do to ensure that Christiane is given a second face and a second chance at life. He is not in it for the fame, but rather the consuming love of a father that will do anything for his daughter. He shows no remorse for the lives he takes in the process, whether they be human or animal, each subject equal to the last. In the end, it is his obsessive willingness of sacrifice and life that literally mutilates and consumes him.

Edna and Christiane each waver in their morality. For Edna, there is a devotion to the doctor that can not be broken. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t question whether they should continue in their attempts to revive Christiane to her former beauty. This is first seen at the funeral of Christiane, the cover to protect their experiment unsettling t0 Edna. This is the first time we see her question the doctor and reevaluate how far she might be willing to go. Where the doctor appears fully lost to his obsession early on, Edna toils with her consciousness. This carries through the film, at times more prominent than others. As she cares for Louise (Alida Valli), whose face is removed for Christiane in their first successful attempt, we feel her uncertainty, both in life and death. While her moral ambiguity ebbs and flows in the film, her commitment to the doctor becomes her undoing.

Christiane is not as straightforward. There is a question as to how aware she is of the consequences of her father’s experiments. At first shown as sheltered and fragile, Christiane finds her way to her father’s lab discovering Louise strapped down to a gurney. She never asks about the girl, before or after her surgery, the film taking a moment to allow Christina to make a choice as she stares at Louise strapped to the operating table. She is a willing participant, accepting the face with little initial remorse for the one who it was ripped from. Yet, as the face transplant fails, Christiane begins to change, guilt and isolation compounding her growing desire to be no longer the lab rat she now sees herself as. Through her own pain, she sees that her father will never stop until he has completely succeeded. She herself wants to die, but rather turns her energy to save her father’s latest victim. In a moment of redemption, Christiane frees Paulette (Béatrice Altariba) from the operating table, eventually bringing an end to both Edna and her father.

Conclusion:

Eyes Without a Face packs some surprises that hold even in the face of time. The film sports little in the way of a score. many times the carnivalesque music is reserved to accompany Edna as she carries out the dirty work for the doctor. The absence of score allows for the film to utilize character and narrative to fill its frame with tension and anticipation. This is not a film driven by sound, but rather by the impending horror that is almost always just around the corner. Besides the score, I found myself surprised by the amount of horror there was.

I always expected we would see the mutilation that had befallen Christiane’s face, but I did not expect Franju to show it as early as he does. It is incredible the timing of its reveal, you as a viewer strangely both satisfied yet yearning for more. You know the film has more punch to deliver, and you can’t wait to crane your neck once more to see what disaster awaits. The film is far gorier than I would have expected for a film made in 1960. We watch as Edna and Dr. Génessier perform the face removal on Louise. My expectation was for the camera to play with angles and tricks to minimize our exposure while also giving horrific snippets to make the mind run wild. Rather the camera is front and center. We watch as he makes his incision, blood springing free. The camera continues to hold too as he slowly begins to remove the skin, taking the face in its entirety to transfer to Christiane. Tastefully done and exquisitely horrific, Eyes Without a Face delivers exactly the right amount of terror making it easy to see why it is such an enduring horror classic.

Watch Eyes Without a Face