Eyes Without A Face - Will's Review

Eyes without a face is a French-Italian co-production. Were it not for the subtitles there would very little clue to this, feeling instead like one of the many American produced sci-fi horrors put out by Universal or MGM at about the same time, indeed, this would sit well on a shelf next to Village of the Damned, being one of the more thoughtful, sympathetic, examples of the genre.

One of the things that makes the movie so poignant, it its absence of a true villain. Yes, as antagonist of the piece, Dr. Génessier, does some objectively evil things; he has women captured and performs disfiguring, sometimes fatal, surgeries on them, and of course these things are unforgivable, but they are not carried out through malice.

Due to a car accident, for which Génessier himself is responsible, his daughter Christiane has been left with no face, just a gaping wound with eyes.

Christiane's disfigurement is only glimpsed a couple of times in the movie, through most of her screen time she wears a hauntingly beautiful, mask her father has made her, which manages to be at once expressionless and sad, human but alien; the power of the image of Christiane's "face" is a credit to both the prop-makers, who have provided a mask which is exactly human enough for the movie, and actress Edith Scob, who's remarkable eyes compleat the picture.

Story wise, we follow in tandem the Génessier's quest to find a successful procedure through which Christiane's face may be rebuilt, and the local police department as they follow a series of disappearing persons cases (unbeknownst to them, the subject of Dr. Génessier's experiments).

After the slating I gave The Birds for its lack of ending, you may be surprised to see me recommend this film, but I feel it's ending is open, rather than absent; offering a partial-resolution bringing some degree of closure to some character arks, while allowing us to presume, or internally debate, the fates of the others.

In spite of its subject matter, Eyes Without A Face doesnt really feel like a 'Horror' movie in the traditional sense; it is, however, a beautiful, almost poetic, movie, which is more than worth your time.