Product Details

• Actors: Georges Hubert, Nicole Ladmiral, Alfred Macquart, Maurice Griselle, André Brunier
• Directors: Georges Franju
• Writers: Georges Franju, Claude Sautet, Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau, Pierre Gascar
• Producers: Jules Borkon
• Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion
• DVD Release Date: October 19, 2004
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002V7O0Q
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,978 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Eyes Without a Face (The Criterion Collection)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Georges Franju brings a haunting poetry to this lyrical and horrifying 1959 French classic. Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), a famed plastic surgeon, lures a young woman to his secluded mansion with the help of his mistress Louise (Alida Valli), where he proceeds to remove their faces in an attempt to restore his daughter's scarred visage. Christiane (Edith Scob), disfigured in car accident caused by her guilt-ridden father, hides behind a spooky blank mask that exposes only her sad, lonely eyes, which seem to lose a little more life after each failed graft. Franju's cool presentation gives an unsettling edge to the picture, from the uncomfortably quiet family dinners to Christiane's hesitant explorations of her father's laboratory to the unflinching views of Genessier's bloody operations. Reminiscent of Cocteau's fantasy imagery in Beauty and the Beast, Franju creates an eerie poetry of the doctor's sadistic experiments, culminating in an astonishingly brutal and beautiful finale. The screenplay was cowritten by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, authors of the novels which became Les Diaboliques and Vertigo. Originally titled Les Yeux Sans Visage upon its original French release, the film was cut, dubbed, and renamed The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus for American distribution in 1962, but was restored years later for American re-release. --Sean Axmaker

Product Description

Secluded in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore his beloved daughter’s once-beautiful face, but at a horrifying price. Lauded as a true rarity of horror cinema, Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans visage) has influenced countless films in its wake and stunned audiences around the world with its shocking yet poetic imagery. The Criterion Collection is proud to present Georges Franju’s lyrical black-and-white classic in a long-awaited, high-definition DVD edition.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Something dark for Halloween. June 17, 2005

By I. Sondel VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

I guess I'm a horror film snob, but I like my "creature features" and ghost stories with a little class. Give me Julie Harris in "The Haunting," or Deborah Kerr "The Innocents," or Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast," or Mia Farrow in "Rosemary's Baby." One of my all-time favorite horror films is this macabre tale of a girl with a tragically disfigured face and her mad-surgeon of a father, obsessed with restoring her beauty - no matter the cost.

Directed by Georges Franju and scripted by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who wrote "Diabolique" and "Vertigo"), "Eyes Without a Face" is one of the most stylish, suspensful and gruesome films I've ever seen. My sister leaves the room during the surgical sequences - really, truly horrific. The performances are excellent throughout. The physician's assistant is played by the wonderful Alida Valli (of "The Third Man" fame). Pierre Brasseur plays the surgeon and Edith Scob is simply haunting in the titular role. The great Maurice Jarre composed the score. Don't miss this one. Play this on Halloween for all your friends who've never heard of it - and then sit back and watch them squirm. Great movie.

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An artistic mad doctor splatter flick from France November 1, 2002

By Lawrance M. Bernabo HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:VHS Tape

"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! Read more ›

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Horror Poetry December 27, 2000

By Eric Sanberg

Format:VHS Tape

When I first saw this film as a young man, those releasing it in the States were obviously trying to cash in on the hard-core horror market so they released it under the unconcionable title "Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus." This is probably why I laid my $.25 down and walked in to see it. I had a pentient for trashy horror flicks that I don't seem to have entirely outgrown. Anyway...it was obvious even to me that this was a cut above what I was used to seeing. Yes, there were some graphic scenes that would make most peoples' skin crawl, but it was more than that. As I was able to see it again some 40 or so years later I realized why. This movie gets under your skin with haunting imagery and sadness. The story, about a doctor who uses his assistant to kidnap young woumen so he can remove the skin from their faces in order to restore the face of his own daughter, actually started a small sub-genre in horror films. This is by far the best I've seen. The black and white cinematography is beautiful. Few films use light and shadow to the effect they are seen here. And when the daughter is first seen with her featureless, white mask it is one of the creepiest and saddest moments in film. These aren't shallow, evil people we're witnessing here. These are people driven by guilt and dedication, carrying out acts that make sense to them in their circumstances. The mechanics of the plot, particularly those involving the police, are somewhat pedestrian, but there is more than enough here to overcome the minor shortcomings. When the viewer reaches the end of the film, to see the shot of the daughter outside her house on a windswept night, few moments in cinema ever reach the same degree of power, horror and poetry as those caught here.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dissection of a masterpiece. Dvd features below April 1, 2008

By Mike Liddell VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

In the book jacket of the criterion dvd producer Jules Borkon told director Georges Franju that in the film there would need to be blood. But not too much blood because of French censors, also no animal torture because it upsets the British, and no mad scientists, since the Germans are touchy about the whole Nazi doctor thing.
As Borkon handed Franju a script about a mad doctor that tortures animals while cutting off women's faces. Sound like a challenge?

Luckily this inspired Franju to step his game up to transcend what might have been a B horror movie into a masterpiece. Franju was also in good company on the film with the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac who were also the writing team that assisted Hitchcock on Vertigo and Clouzot on Diabolique. Cinematographer Eugen Schufftan to make Franjus vision of realism come to life, Schufftan who had also worked with Fritz Lang and Edgar Ulmer.

Eyes without a face is the story of a Dr. Génessier who is indeed a mad doctor but is not screaming It's Alive, It's Alive like Dr. Frankenstein. On the contrary unlike Dr. Frankenstein he isn't giving life but unknowingly taking his patient's life away. That patient is Christiane Génessie his own daughter whose face was left mangled after a car accident in which her father, as she states was driving insane as he always did.

Dr. Genessie now removes women's faces to transplant to his daughters so she can come from behind a eerie mask she is encouraged to wear. He does this with the help of Louise his assistant who is loyal to the Dr. for giving back her own face through surgery.

Patrick McGrath an author who did a write up on the Criterion case jacket states that the Dr.... is not motivated by love but by guilt in creating these horrible acts. I personally did not see that, but a man who had lost his sole and was obsessed with the work itself, after thinking he finally made his daughters face perfect again he stated you can't put a price on that. Christiane herself told Louise that she is a godsend to him to have as a guinea pig as she pleaded for her to kill her. However the Dr. does show moments of being human when he helps a boy, this apparently is what angered our American censors who didn't mind the blood and carnage but giving the Dr. compassion was inexcusable and was one of the cuts made to the film originally.

The film as a horror movie is filed with dread, when a girl is lured back to the house of the Dr. and realizes she made a mistake I could see a lot of our torture films being influenced here like Hostel II for example. However Eyes without a face has motive and plot. And even for 1959 there are moments that make you squirm as the first realistic documentary style face removal, and after his daughter's successful face transplant goes wrong showing photos of her face's deterioration after different amounts of time elapse.

The film is also filled with metaphors and makes you think. For example if this surgery were for the good but horrible acts to a few had to happen in order to benefit many is that alright? Sounds a bit familiar.

Is Christiane's plastic mask symbolic for the masks people are encouraged to put on each day?

Perhaps it symbolizes the mask the director Franju was encouraged to put on this film and the struggle it must have been to rise above it as Christiane must rise up against the evil in her father.

Are parents that try to sculpt and mold their children into what they want because they think it's best are they stopping that child from really living?

I could go on and on, this is a great horror film and great film for any genre. As his film suggests beauty is only skin deep but directors like Franju show how deep a genre hated by many critics such as horror can go.

SPECIAL FEATURES
- New Restored HD transfer (looked pristine
-Blood of the Beasts, Franju's 1949 short doc about the slaughterhouses of Paris
-Archival interviews w/ Franjo on horror, cinema, and the making of blood of the beasts
-Excert from les grands peres du crime, a doc features eyes without a faces writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Diabolique, Vertigo)
-Theatrical Trailers
-Stills gallery of rare production photos and promo material
-New essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and writer and film historian David Kalat (which i refer to throughout the review) Read more ›