Eyes Without A Face (DVD)

Christiane is the much loved daughter of esteemed plastic surgeon, Dr Gennesier. Unfortunately, a car accident leaves her face so badly scarred than usual medical procedures can do nothing to save her. Along with his assistant, Louise, he engineers another girl's death, identifying the body of that of Christiane's. In the meantime, they search for a suitable girl to become a donor. Dr Gennesier's maverick operating skills don't work at first, and so he is forced to try again and again. Christiane, who is dead to everyone but her father and Louise, is horrified at what is happening and tries to make contact with her former fiance, Jacques. Can Jacques do anything to save ...  Read the complete review

A review of the Second Sight DVD, available for around £6 on amazon. Great French horror films are rather like great French military victories: most people would be hard pressed to name any. Unless you try to co-opt Les Diaboliques into the horror genre - and it isn't a perfect fit - you're really left with one film: Eyes Without a Face, horror's Austerlitz. It was made in 1959 by acclaimed documentarist Georges Franju; as with Peeping Tom, released at about the same time, the critics at the time reacted with utter disgust. Since then it's gone on to be recognised as a great film, perhaps even by people who normally turn their noses up at ...  Read the complete review

Eyes Without a Face or Les Yeux Sans Visage to give the film its original French title is an unforgettable piece of French horror cinema. Filmed in 1959, the scenes of horror may be decidedly tame in comparison to modern cinema, yet the film has a story and vision that have endured the years. The plot of the film focuses on Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) whose daughter has been left with a horrifically disfigured face following a car accident. The combination of the adoration he has for his daughter and his quest to perfect the science of heterografting leads Génessier to try and restore his daughter's beauty by grafting the face of a helpless victim onto hers. ...  Read the complete review

Conjurer of some of the most bewitching, haunting, not to say disturbing images in post-war French cinema, Georges Franju tasked himself with a systematic renovation of the national - indeed international - subconscious, rummaging around in the furthest corners, scaring the ghosts out from therein - Guilt! Culpability! - and planting a host of new ones in their stead. The towering achievements regarding both this particular project and, arguably, his cinematic work in general are represented by Blood of the Beasts - his notorious 1949 documentary short detailing the grisly goings on in Parisian slaughter-houses - and Eyes Without A Face, his 1960 ...  Read the complete review

At the time when Eyes Without a Face was released, it really caused a stir. The film contains rather graphic (even these days) scenes of facial plastic surgery, which still have the ability to make the viewer squirm. This dark tale is about a girl who is horribly disfigured in a car accident, her father feeling guilty for causing the accident, and vowing to make her beautiful again by taking the faces of other attractive girls and grafting them into his daughter - So far, so surrealist. Its hard to imagine how this managed to sneak past the censors, from the aforementioned surgery, to the dark subject matter, to the grisly end which the father ...  Read the complete review