Rating: 
Summary: An artistic mad doctor splatter flick from France
Review: "Eyes Without a Face" ("Les Yeux sans visage") is a horror film in which there is certain sympathy with the mad doctor, in this case Doctor Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) who is trying to repair the horrible damage to his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) in a car accident that was his fault. The doctor, helped by his assistant Louise (Alida Valli), has been kidnapping young girls so that he can remove their skin and graft it onto Christiane's ruined face. Not only do the victims die, but the grafts fail, forcing Genessier to try again and again and again. What makes Georges Franju's film work is the inherent sympathy we feel towards the father trying to make his daughter beautiful again, just as we are repulsed by the surgical procedures he uses. Meanwhile, Genessier remains oblivious to what his efforts are doing to Christiane's own tenuous hold on reality. "Eyes Without a Face" moves back and forth from the sacred and the profane, between the love of a parent for a child and meaningless destruction of human life. Franju conveys this contrast visually through the use of poetic images and realistic scenes. I have read arguments that "Eyes Without a Face" should be considered with "Psycho" as creating the splatter flick, and while it is hard to imagine anything having the impact of Hitchcock's film, Franju's movie is more artistic overall (of course, the shower scene is the master trump when we talk about horror films as "art"). This black & white French film with English subtitles is well worth seeing and could end up on your personal top 10 horror film list. The "Eyes Without a Face" translation is actually the British title for this 1959 release, which was called "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus" when released in the United States in 1962, in what must be one of the stupidest titles grafted onto a foreign film in cinema history. Here you have a film that walks a fine line between beautiful visual images, such as when Christiane walks through the house in her mask, and viseral horror, represented by not just the operation scenes but the film's climax. The title is simple and elegant, not to mention appropriate to the story being told, and some suit who heard about Christopher Marlowe while reading an E.C. comic comes up with "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus." Mon dieu, mon ami!
Rating:
Summary: Franju where are you?
Review: But what about Georges Franju? What do we know about him and what other films has he made other than "Eyes Without a Face?" I know about, but haven't seen, his ground-breaking documentary "Blood of Beasts" ("Sang des Betes"). I actually own a copy of another film he made called "Judex" which is totally different than either of these. And it is wonderful also.I can't believe he only made three films.Where are the others?
"Eyes Without a Face" is a masterpiece of horror because it goes to the heart of what we fear most-loss of our looks and the pathetic preoccupation with staying young and looking like the magazines and advertisers tell us to. The film is sad because the doctor can't do anything physical to help his daughter.All his skill is useless in the face of her disfigurement. Trying to change fate is useless, learning to live with it is not.
Rating:
Summary: Franju where are you?
Review: But what about Georges Franju? What do we know about him and what other films has he made other than "Eyes Without a Face?" I know about, but haven't seen, his ground-breaking documentary "Blood of Beasts" ("Sang des Betes"). I actually own a copy of another film he made called "Judex" which is totally different than either of these. And it is wonderful also.I can't believe he only made three films.Where are the others?
"Eyes Without a Face" is a masterpiece of horror because it goes to the heart of what we fear most-loss of our looks and the pathetic preoccupation with staying young and looking like the magazines and advertisers tell us to. The film is sad because the doctor can't do anything physical to help his daughter.All his skill is useless in the face of her disfigurement. Trying to change fate is useless, learning to live with it is not.
Rating:
Summary: Skin deep indeed!
Review: Foolishly dubbed a Horror Film, this is so much more! Favourite scene? Finale : towards the end of the movie when the exquisitely masked and now quite insane daughter [Edith Scob], like a nightmarish Coppelia, is surrounded by the fluttering birds as papa's screams fade ..... Oh, the things people do for love! It's a tale of plastic surgery - reconstructive plastic surgery gone awry, a father's love for his daughter, and unfulfilled love [Alida Valli], the assistant, who will do anything for her lover. A guilt-driver father is determined to restore his daughter's shattered beauty, and there are plenty of available transients [they live in the country, which makes this "activity" oh, so convenient]. But the transplanted faces [there are many], are being rejected by daughter . . . .and the process must be repeated... Another rather queasy moment? Victim's POV - she sees her face literally being lifted off her skull [fortunately in black and white - color would detract from this horror]. Originally badly recut and dubbed in English, this is a must see in the original French - perhaps a DVD version is on the horizon? A superior and exquisitely elegant product.
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Summary: Poetry in 'horrific' motion
Review: Georges Franju might be the most underrated director of French cinema history that I know of. His films were marveled at by no less than both Jean Cocteau and Jean Luc-Goddard. As far as *Horror Cinema* goes, "Eyes Without A Face" AKA "Les Yeux Sans Visage" might be the most poetic, eerie film ever lensed. The haunting portrait of Christiane, masked, faceless, and disfigured since an earlier car accident, combined with the obsession of her brilliant father-surgeon, determined to find and graft a 'new' face for her, will leave horrific impressions of intense beauty that will not easily be forgotten. A mixture of fantasy and realism that combines for a movie that far surpasses today's "horror story" standards. Check it out if you're not looking to see a typical 90's "run-of-the-mill" slasher film, AND if you have the patience and understanding to notice the subleties of poetry-in-motion when it surfaces in a genre outside of it's normal influence.
Rating: 
Summary: A Memorable Foreign Horror Film
Review: I had never seen this film before and thought I would try it solely based on the customer reviews and AMAZON.com recommendations. I was not disappointed. This is a truly striking film. The movie is French with English subtitles which in no way detracts from its enjoyment for English-speaking viewers. The film is about a guilt-ridden plastic surgeon seeking suitable skin grafts for his horribly disfigured daughter. The daughter's disfigurement was due to an automobile accident that was the fault of her surgeon-father. The "doners" for the skin grafts are unsuspecting, attractive young women. I will leave you, the reader, to take it from there. The acting is superb. The photography is crisp black and white and is rather "artful" in a way. I am not the biggest fan of foreign horror films but this one is good and easy to follow. As far as the quality of the video itself, it is excellent. I obtained the new release from Kino Video and I have no complaints. The video was struck from an excellent quality print with only very minor and very infrequent "speckles of age". The videotape is quality superb and well worth the price.
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Summary: One of the Great Horror Films
Review: Saw this film as a kid (about 14yrs.old), called Horror Chamberof Dr. Faustus, dubbed. Loved it. Saw the French version recently.Like it even more, scarier now than as a kid. Saw it with a friend and she was scared, too, and also loved it. Almost like a cross between Hitchcock & Cocteau, it shows the minimum amount of gore with the maximum effect. Head and shoulders over the stuff that passes as horror now, a real jewel.
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Summary: ABSORBING GOTHIC HORROR......
Review: This is one of my favorite foriegn films and one of my favorite horror movies. How devastating this must have been in 1959! At once unsettling even disturbing and yet dreamily lyrical, Les Yeaux Sans Visage stands as a masterpiece of French Gothic horror. Georges Franju directs this as a painting of otherwordly colors (in b&w) and images in evoking an adult fairy tale with the unhappy "princess" being set free in the end surrounded by beautiful birds. All the while, though, it is still a shocking plastic surgery/scarred face story laden with misplaced love and guilt. It conjures emotions that leave you feeling uneasy for days afterwards....This is a must for DVD (from Image hopefully) to preserve the beautiful b&w imagery and to offer the uncut version in it's entirety...keep those cards and letters coming!
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Summary: A Portent of Movies to Come
Review: This startling work combines the plot of a splatter movie with the cold, composed style of 1950's Stanley Kubrick. You can sense in it the French appreciation of Poe, Cornell Woolrich, and the Gothic. It has many touches of dark humor and irony that complement the ominous, poetic visual style. Strange moments of anguished emotion keep breaking through the tightly constructed surface of the film. It also anticipates the more graphic horror films to come in the future. The famous "operation" scene will make your skin crawl even after 40 years. The real subject is, of course, our fetishization of female beauty, and what that dehumanization really costs. The figure of a ruthless, murderous doctor performing obscene medical experiments also must have had special relevance to a France that had experienced the terrors of German occupation during World War II. Maurice Jarre's music is memorably spooky. You won't soon forget this one.
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Summary: A Little Masterpiece
Review: Though this is admittedly a small scale, low-budget work, this exceptionally beautiful film is one of my favorites because there are few films, of whatever scope, that succeed in creating real depth almost purely by the evocative power of their images
and Les Yeux sans Visage (Eye Without A Face) does this.
Edith Scob's Christiane is one of the most truly dream-like, forlornly resonating, hauntingly poetic images in the history of cinema. In this it is comparable to Lon Chaney Sr.'s Quazimodo and John Hurt's Elephant Man. There is a purity in her image that penetrates deeply into the viewer and summons up strong emotions.
The plot of this film may seem at first to be merely typical, hackneyed, horror material, but its theme of blind and domineering science running rampant over the feelings and lives of both animals and people was a subject that the director, Georges Franju, took very seriously. The last frames of this film, with the appropriately horrid death of the amoral scientest and then the masked Christiane freeing the animals and silently drifting away into the night, are a serious statement created purely in images by one of the world's most underrated
director's. A wonderful film. Highly recommended
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