"I want to take his face.... off."
- Sean Archer as Castor Troy in Face/Off
I'm pretty sure that Face/Off wouldn't exist without Eyes Without A Face, which is probably this film's greatest contribution to cinema. Just kidding, sort of. This is the second French horror film I've seen in the past month, the other being the deliciously devious Les Diaboliques, so I was expecting something along those lines. While the concept of Eyes Without A Face is creepy as hell, it doesn't really deliver the thrills and chills I expected, but what it does do well is set an eerie atmosphere of part horror and almost fantasy.
The film opens with a woman driving down a road with a body in the backseat. She dumps the body in the river where it is later found, shockingly without a face...
A doctor who specializes in plastic surgery is desperately trying to fix his daughter's disfigured face. So what does he do? Get his female accomplice to lure young women into his mansion where he subdues them and then perform horrifying face transplants to give his daughter a new face. He hasn't quite perfected the technique yet, so he has to do it over and over again with different girls until he gets it right. Pretty gruesome stuff, except that this isn't a bloody mess like typical horror films. Much of the tension and queasiness comes from wondering what director Georges Franju will actually show. You never get a clear look at the doctor's daughter's disfigured face as Christiane either has her face buried in a pillow sulking or is roaming the house wearing a mask.
Despite the film's morbid nature, there really isn't much to hide your face from (aha) except for one scene that is so remarkably cold and precise it is shocking to watch unfold. As I watched the doctor carefully use the scalpel on his victim's face, it was like watching real footage of surgeries which I've always found way more queasy than film gore. Even though the scene isn't really bloody and is actually probably laughably simple, it works so well because of just how little else Franju shows in the film.
This isn't a horror film in the traditional sense where you are constantly on the edge of your seat. It is more horrifying to think about than anything. The doctor isn't the sadistic mad scientist but rather an obsessed and desperate man trying to help his daughter. There is the body in the beginning of the film and a victim in the middle, but you get the impression there have been dozens of them.
Christiane isn't the helpless daughter either. She knows exactly what is going on and what her father has been doing, but she is also a victim as well trapped in the house and trapped behind her mask. Even when she does get a new face, it's not really hers and must see someone else's face in the mirror. She has one of the strangest screen presences I've ever seen. Part of you feels sorry for her, the other part is completely terrified of the phantom-like aura she gives off. It's almost as if she floats around the house in a dreamlike fantasy.
Despite its great premise and dark ambiance, I couldn't help but wish for more. If only Franju did more of this instead of that or if he changed a scene a little or added this in, etc. It's hard to really put my finger on it, but I feel like this good film could have been GREAT. I'll probably sound totally ignorant saying this, but I wonder what David Fincher could have done with this screenplay today. Or if you want to compare Franju to one of his contemporaries, what would Alfred Hitchcock have done? Could he have done better? Would anything even be markedly different?
Grade: B
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