Dir. Georges Franju
"The eyes are the window to the soul".In Eyes Without a Face, we are presented with the tale of Christiane (Edith Scob). She, a victim of a car-crash perpetrated by her father (Pierre Brasseur) has been left disfigured. Her father, a pioneering plastic surgeon specialising in skin grafting, has attempted to graft the face of a kidnapped local student onto his daughter. As we are introduced to Christiane, she is face-down in a pillow, depressed and in anguish, the surgery a failure, leaving her face as disfigured as it ever was. An assistant to her father, Louise (Alida Valli) attempts to comfort Christiane, and stresses that she should wear her mask. The mask, completely plain of features beyond a nose and lips, allows us to view Christiane's eyes. They have not been impacted by the crash, it is only through her eyes that we are able to see Christiane behind the mask.
Eyes Without a Face is a cold film, lit starkly throughout, with the mansion home of Dr. Genessier a modernised Frankenstein's castle. A basement of caged stray dogs, a clinical surgical room, and large empty rooms, occupied only by Christiane, her father, and Louise. In the introductory scene to Christiane, she bemoans to her father that all the mirrors within the house have been removed or blacked-out. Christiane knows she has been left hideous, and catches reflections in the window of her true visage. Her father is established throughout as being driven by success, and controls his environment. Late in the film, Christiane again bemoans the fact that even on the road, her father has to be domineering, thereby causing the crash which has impacted her life.
None of the main trio are innocent however. Dr. Genessier, flawed in personality, works with Louise to kidnap young students so that he may operate on them, removing their faces, leading one (Juliette Mayniel) to suicide as she realises her sorrowful state. Louise, who we learn is in debt to Dr. Genessier for fixing her face in the past, entraps young women - specifically targeting lonely, pretty students looking for accommodation. Christine herself goes along with the surgeries, and in a key scene, observes and strokes the face of the soon-to-be-victim. Each is flawed in different ways: the Dr., ego-driven and obsessive; Louise, free of empathy; and Christine, apathetic to the horror that befell her being forced onto other women.
The controlling nature of Dr. Genessier is best expressed to me in his removal of the mirrors throughout the house. We see one, blacked out in the background of a scene, and in a later scene, Christiane sneaks into the surgery, viewing her face at last. By removing this self-reflective ability, the Dr. is denying her daughter the ability to come to terms with her disfigurement. It's clear from his behaviour that he feels ashamed, less so for the act of disfiguring his daughter, but rather in his inability to successfully graft a face which does not succumb to necrosis. His control of the mirrors is less the empathetic hiding of potential emotional distress from Christiane, but rather a means of disallowing Christiane from getting used to her 'new' disfigured face, as he is confident she will soon have a fixed one due to his work.
Christiane's mask therefore acts as a symbol of this patriarchal, familial oppression. Her eyes, remarkably expressive due to the superb acting of Edith Scob, inform everyone who witnesses her (including us as viewers) of the emotional pain she is suffering. We see in her eyes how she deals with her loss of innocence in allowing the morally horrific surgeries to take place, and indeed the plight she has been forced into by her father's actions, both by the crash, the effect on her face, and the ongoing surgeries. The accident has removed much from Christiane, but not the ability for empathy to be felt, as her eyes, the window to her soul, remain intact.
Indeed, during the graphic scenes of surgery we see how her father cuts around the eyes of the victims. This practical act stands as another symbol of identity, as we are left to ponder how one's identity can be physically stolen by surgery, but is spiritually un-tampered by being leaving the eyes un-tampered. However, as we see in Christiane, this is false, as the eyes reflect the corruption of the soul by this cold, violent act. The victim we do see awakes with eyes peering from a bandaged face, as she panics and is hugely distressed, leading to her escape by leaping from a top-floor window, killing herself. Christiane's eyes are corrupted by her internal struggle, which reaches a climax as she frees the potential second victim (Béatrice Altariba), and rejects everything that has been done to her and the victims, by stabbing Louise in the neck, directly through the surgical scars of Louise's past.
Throughout the film, there are parallels between Christiane and the stray dogs fostered by the Dr.. In one scene, Dr. Genessier laments how people abandon dogs after they grow up and become less cute, still requiring food, care, and attention. He jokes that the raising of the dog is the hardest part, and abandoning them half-way through their life seems a waste. Does this reflect his views on Christiane? Like a sunk-cost fallacy, he has raised his daughter, put a lot of work into the surgeries to fix her, stooped to moral lows - so he can't stop now. The Dr. operates on the dogs, wishing he had better stock to use.
After the stabbing of Louise, Christiane frees the caged animals, as the dogs escape and maul her father to death, ironically leaving his face disfigured. Christiane leaves the mansion she herself had been caged in, with a dove on her shoulder, a symbol of innocence freed. She is escaping her past, her father, and now embraces a new life of moral purity. For now, she continues to wear the mask, allowing her eyes to express the innocent beauty that was inside her all along. Unlike the famous Phantom of the Opera, whose mask hid monstrous behaviour as well as physical disfigurement, Christiane's mask will hide physical disfigurement, but crucially not a spiritual one. A new spirit borne from the violent killing of Louise and Dr. Genessier, a new rebirth from violence; but unlike the violent car accident, she is this time free from the controlling influence of her father. The film becomes therefore a fantasy, a fairy tale of a young girl in a castle, escaping her controlling father, and becoming a new woman, free as a bird.
In these terms, we see how the film bares similarity to older horror, such as that of the 19th century. The modern surgical context belies the fact that Louise and the Doctor act, vampire-like, to kidnap young girls to a castle, where their life is sacrificed to benefit others. Beauty is physically stolen to replace the monstrous, like young blood sustaining vampiric everlasting life. The surgery itself a Frankenstein process of imbuing dead tissue with life, here by physically grafting skin from one body to another. However, the process is temporary, as the graft fails and decays, leading to further violence having to be enacted. Life cannot be perverted in such a way. Christiane exemplified the difficulty, but correct response, to embrace the hallmarks of near-death, and while robbed of physical beauty, use it to enrich a stronger spiritual purity. Perverting it with violence, as her father does, on the other hand can only lead to failure, exemplified by the surgical failures, and his violent death by the fangs of his caged animals.
Such themes are presented and modernised by Eyes Without a Face, and go on to be echoed in films such as Frankenheimer's Seconds, or Almodovar's The Skin I Live In. In Seconds, the theme of stolen identity is rooted in ennui, rather than trauma; and even in action films like Woo's Face/Off we see how stolen identity can serve themes such as revenge, duty, and family. Like mirrors, the same subject matter can be reflected in different ways, be it via plot, direction, or even genre. Eyes Without a Face however, nearly 60 years after its release, endures as a classic of horror as it imbues what could have been a simple horror-shocker with deeper themes of identity, control, and morality.
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