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Eyes Without a Face

Les yeux sans visage

France, Italy

1960

90 Min
Black and White
1.66:1
French
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
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DIR Georges Franju

PROD Jules Borkon

SCR Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Jean Redon, Claude Sautet, Pierre Gascar

DP Eugen Schüfftan

CAST Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Édith Scob, François Guérin, Juliette Mayniel, Alexandre Rignault, Beatrice Altariba, Charles Blavette, Claude Brasseur, Michel Etcheverry, Yvette Etiévant, René Génin, Lucien Hubert, Marcel Pérès

ED Gilbert Natot

PROD DES Auguste Capelier

MUSIC Maurice Jarre

SOUND Antoine Archimbaud

Cannes (Cannes Classics), AFI FEST (Guest Director Program), !F Istanbul (!f Cult), San Sebastián (Georges Franju)

Synopsis

Secluded in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured face—but at a horrifying price. At once ghastly lyrical, Eyes Without a Face is a true rarity of horror cinema and has influenced countless films. —The Criterion Collection

Director

Original

Georges Franju

Georges Franju (12 April 1912 – 5 November 1987) was a French filmmaker. He was born in Fougères, Ille-et-Vilaine.

Before working in French cinema, Franju had several different jobs. These included working for an insurance company and in a noodle factory. Franju was also briefly in the military in Algeria and was discharged in 1932. On his return, Franju studied to become a set designer and later created backdrops for music halls including Casino de Paris and the Folles Bergère.

In the mid-thirties, Franju and Henri Langlois met through Franju’s twin brother Jacques Franju. As well as creating the 16 mm short film Le Métro, Langois and Franju also started a short-lived film magazine and created a film club called Le Cercle du Cinema with 500 francs he borrowed from Langlois’ parents. The club showed silent films from their own collections followed by an informal debate about them amongst members. From Le Cercle du Cinema, Franju and Langlois founded the Cinématheque… read more

Wall

Displaying 4 of 44 wall posts.
Picture of Baby Rocco

Baby Rocco

18Jun13

All i can think about is Billy Idol's 80's classic with the same title. Definitely going to watch this.

Picture of Luis Valenzuela

Luis Valenzuela

31May13

Beautiful, haunting and a true cult classic. Christiane Génessier walking trough the night like a ghost with her masked face its both a haunting an poetic image that will stay with you for a long time. A movie that was clearly ahead of its time and that still has a powerful approach making a horror movie filled with authentic dramatic and poetic elements, haunting visuals and both unsettling and beautiful shots.

João Romeiro likes this

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Marcus Killerby

18Apr13

The score fluctuates between being silly and inappropriate to being dreamy and creepy. When it is the latter it lends the film a fairy tale quality. The face removal scene and subsequent face deterioration sequence are fantastic. And that ending is bizarre without seeming to try hard to be. The weakest point of the film is the utterly useless police force, worse than useless they are morally reprehensible. 4/5

Picture of Trevor Kwong

Trevor Kwong

8Dec12

I went to a screening of this where they showed Le sang des bêtes right before. Probably the most effective programming I've ever experienced. It was like a prelude to a concerto. The whole time I kept thinking of the slaughterhouse and it made my heart that much more uncomfortable. Shows you how much truth there is in the statement I heard somewhere that we bring all our past to the films we watch.

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Articles

Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
W184

The Best of “Movie Poster of the Day”

By Adrian Curry on July 6, 2012

The 20 most popular posters to date from our related Tumblr, Movie Poster of the Day.

read article
W184

Movie Poster of the Week: Georges Franju’s “Nuits rouges”

By Adrian Curry on June 22, 2012

Some wildly different posters, and some marvellous ephemera, for Franju’s final film maudit.

read article
W184

The Forgotten: Death by Light

By David Cairns on January 14, 2010

Above: An heir is electrocuted by an arc light. Smoking. Pleins feux sur l'assassin, (loosely, "Open Fire at the Killer") is the 1961 film

read article
W184

Tuesday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report: "La tête contre les murs" (Franju, 1959)

By Glenn Kenny on October 6, 2009

Some films, and filmmakers, just can't catch the right kind of breaks as far as international reputation goes. A very smart United States distributor

read article
W184

The Forgotten: Homunculus, mon amour

By David Cairns on December 11, 2008

Everything’s either forgotten, or in danger of being forgotten. Apart from a tired array of Christmas classics, cinema of the past seems enveloped

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W184

Georges Franju and the Terrible Waking Dream

By Daniel Kasman on April 10, 2008

The films of Georges Franju are full of sleepwalkers, automatons, and prisoners.

read article

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Reviews

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Eyes Without a Face

By Tony Paulett​o on December 18, 2009

This exceptional surrealist horror is remeniscent of Tim Burton’s early work. Even the music is notably Danny Elfman-esque. The most impressive attribute of Eyes Without a Face is that it exceeds the…  read review

Eyes Without a Face

By Joshua Robert Hathawa​y on November 2, 2009

This film portrays the horrific acts of a doctor trying to save his daughter and the daughter who would rather die than be saved by these terrible deeds but these ideas could have been distilled in…  read review

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DVD

Buy the DVD from The Criterion Collection.