Monday, 4 February 2019

EYES WITHOUT A FACE

Working on the premise that what we don't see but imagine is infinitely more frightening than what we do, Georges Franju gave us "Les Yeux Sans Visage", (aka "Eyes Without a Face"), his masterpiece of the horror genre, in 1958. It's about a mad, bad and very dangerous to know surgeon, (Pierre Brasseur) who, with the help of his assistant Alida Valli, kills young women and attempts to graft their faces onto his daughter who has been disfigured in an accident. Franju never shows us the daughter's disfigurement or the aftermath of the (mostly botched) surgery, leaving it up to the viewer to think the worst. The result is genuinely chilling and a lot more unsettling than the slasher movies of today. This has been described as the most 'poetical' of horror movies and there's certainly a grotesque beauty in Eugene Shuftan's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. Not many people who have seen this film will easily forget the image of Edith Scob as the daughter almost floating through the vast house, her disfigured face hidden in a mask or Valli driving through the night on her murderous missions to the strain of Maurice Jarre's superb score. Almodovar paid his own tribute to it with "The Skin I Live In".

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