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The burial of Christiane (Edith Scob), the daughter of Dr. Génessier
(Pierre Brasseur), who has apparently committed suicide after losing her
face in a car accident ... However, there are several things wrong with
that picture: Why was the woman identified as the doctor's assistant
Louise (Alida Valli) seen disposing the body of the girl earlier on, why
is she so close to the doctor, just as if she was his wife (who died 4
years ago, though), and why did the girl's face look as if its skin was
surgically removed and not destroyed in an accident? And why is Louise
spending so much time picking up beautiful young girls in town to take
them to Dr. Génessier's clinic in the suburbs? And why is the doctor
keeping quite as many dogs? Well, there is an answer to all of this:
Christiane is not really dead. Sure, she has lost her face in an accident,
but now the doctor does everything to graft a new face onto her - but for
this he needs involuntary "donors", pretty girl he and Louise -
who actually is his presumed dead wife - kill after surgery. Thing is,
back in the day plastical surgery wasn't nearly as advanced as it is now,
so the new skin on Christiane's face usually wilts away in days. And thus,
Christiane needs more and more donors. Why does the doctor do it though? Not
because Christiane actually demands it, but because he has caused the
accident that made her lose her face, and now he is driven by guilt on one
hand, but on the other by an urge to control everything around him and a
perverted sense of perfection. For him, Christiane's feeling count little,
he just likes to keep her as decoration like a canary. But why does
Louise help the doctor then? Out of gratitude, because after her
accident he has brought her face back to perfection again - it was a
different kind of surgery though. The one thing that keeps Christiane
from actually killing herself though is Jacques (Francois Guérin), the
doctor's young assistant, who has been her boyfriend before the accident -
but now he hasn't got the faintest idea that she is even alive. However,
she phones him every day, without saying anything. Just one day, she
whispers his name into the telephone - and that triggers the young man to
go to the police, who act on a hunch and plant a mole, Paulette (Béatrice
Altariba), a girl who fits the description of all the girls who have gone
missing due to the doctor's experiments, in the doctor's clinic. Dr.
Génessier swallows the bait of course, and soon enough, Paulette finds
herself tied to his operating table right next to Christiane. However, the
doctor is distracted long enough for Paulette to come out of anaesthesia,
and when Christiane hears her scream, she decides to end it for good, so
she frees Paulette, kills her mother, then releases Dr. Génessier's dogs
(which he needed to experiment on) and doves. And while the doctor gets
torn apart by his own dogs, Christiane walks away wearing her crude facial
mask, a white dove on her shoulder, looking like an angel with a wax face
... Sure, on close inspection, the basic concept of this film
sounds pulpy as can be, like something small fry Hollywood studios like Monogram
and PRC would
have churned out some 10 to 20 years earlier, and Eyes without a Face
sure enough served as a blueprint for countless trash movies over the
years. Also, the science this film is based on seems to be a bit
ridiculous not only from today's point of view. However, while watching
the movie, none of this matters in the least, as Eyes without a Face
is not so much a genre movie at heart but more of a dark poem, a film
that's more character- and mood- than plot-driven, a movie
that avoids sensationalism and cheap shocks (though a scene of facial surgery might be hard
to swallow for some) and instead moves at a
deliberately slow pace and manages to build up its atmosphere throughout
until culminating in a finale that (and I apologize for the corny pun beforehands) puts the "poetic" back into poetic
justice. In all, what can I say? It's a must-see of course.
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