derrickneal-98015 This is an artsy horror film from France made in 1960. A surgeon and his apprentice abduct women off the streets and then perform a facial surgery to graft their skin on a woman they have kept imprisoned. Saying anything more would be doing disservice to the film but here is what I can say: This is a haunting film full of intense atmosphere right from the location and setting to the method by which most actors enact their characters. The music also adds to the surreal nature and if such films with surrealistic images and intense atmosphere (which take preceding over plot or character) than this should be a must watch on your list.

jadavix "Eyes Without a Face" disappointed me. Its plot is exceedingly familiar. How many movies are there about evil doctors claiming victims for shadowy experiments? How many are there about doctors claiming victims for just this reason, rebuilding the face or body of their daughter, wife, sister, or whomever? I know, you're probably thinking that this idea may have been original in the '50s. Considering this, you start looking for signs that the movie at least told the story better than the 1001 rip offs that came after it.But if it did, that's hardly a point of pride, since this story was mostly used by b-filmmakers like Jess Franco.It's perhaps marginally better than most of its rip offs. The only really indelible image is the girl in the mask. The movie has no suspense or tension or anything like that.It is worth noting that the movie seems to have been recognized in its day mainly for its violence, which still seems shocking for a movie made in the '50s. This is worth noting because all the rip offs that came later totally out did it on that score, as you can imagine.Therefore, you may wonder what the point of this original version is?

BA_Harrison Eyes Without A Face stars Pierre Brasseur as renowned French surgeon Docteur Génessier, who tries in vain to restore his daughter Christiane's beauty after a car-crash leaves her horribly disfigured. With the help of his devoted assistant Louise (Alida Valli), the doctor abducts young women, grafting their faces onto Christiane, with little success.Highly regarded by many horror connoisseurs, director Georges Franju's macabre mad-scientist classic benefits from a truly cruel villain in Docteur Génessier, who not only mutilates innocent girls, but isn't above tormenting one victim's father (by denying him the right to his daughter's body at the morgue), and treating Christiane like a guinea pig in his experiments. Eyes Without A Face also features some impressive early gore (albeit in black and white), with the surgical removal of a girl's face shown in unflinching detail, and grisly deaths for Louise and Docteur Génessier, who ultimately receive poetic justice.For me, though, the film is just a little too lethargic to be a wholly satisfying experience, the 'haunting' scenes with Christiane in her smooth rubber mask a tad repetitive and a little too much time spent where nothing much of interest occurs. Overall, it's a reasonably entertaining piece, but not as great as its reputation would have one believe.

Dan Franzen (dfranzen70) Eyes without a Face. The title is not a metaphor. It seems that a crusty old doctor, despondent that his daughter's face is, well, no longer present owing to a terrible car accident, has resorted to kidnapping young women, removing their faces, and grafting the faces onto his daughter. The results are not always optimal.Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) has already successfully grafted skin onto the face of his elder daughter, Louise (Alida Valli), with only a minor scar as evidence. But younger daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) has proved to be a more difficult subject, er, patient. Even when the doctor appears to be successful, Christiane's face begins to deteriorate, to the point where she is relegated to wearing a sculpted mask that completely obscures her marred features. Christiane is both ashamed of her condition and increasingly distressed at the lengths to which her father will go to restore his daughter's beauty.Given the French names of the characters, it's no surprise that this movie is actually in French (with English subtitles). But, as is often the case with well-done cinema, these subtitles do nothing to distract from the drama and horror on screen. And this isn't some cheap melodrama, either - it's a horror treat. Director Georges Franju never truly reveals Christiane's non-face face; she's either wearing her mask or is shown in very, very soft focus. This gets the imagination percolating - just how terrible does she look? We do get a sense of the extent of her injuries when we see Genessier operating on one of his victims, carefully slicing the skin off her face (with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth).In this day and age (more than 50 years after the film was released), it's not hard to imagine a serial killer or similar psychopath performing the same surgeries. We've had bad guys skin their victims and make clothes out of them. We've had cannibals with willing victims. Our imaginations are no match for real life. The barbarism of Eyes without a Face is such that the unscheduled operations do not always result in a sedated slip into the next world but rather a life viewed through scarred, trembling, naked eyes.