Eyes Without a Face (1959)
1.66:1 (16x9 Enhanced)
Digital Digital 2.0
The Criterion Collection, $29.95

Using her maternal charms, well-coiffed matron Louise (Alida Valli) lures a young woman off the misty streets of Paris and into her nearby car. With the promise of a room for rent just 20 minutes from the city, the woman is driven to the sinister, isolated villa and clinic of the humorless Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), a renowned pioneer of skin grafts. The young woman is never heard from again. Deep under the villa, in a laboratory where Genessier experiments on a howling pack of stray dogs, the fiendish doctor removes the woman’s face. Guilt-ridden over a car wreck that left his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), with a mutilated face, Genessier’s objective is to graft the new face onto his daughter’s. Unfortunately for all involved, the results are fleeting, and necrosis sets in. The grafted tissue quickly rots, forcing Christiane to return to wearing a ghoulish white mask and awaiting a new “donor.”

Medical experiments, eerie forests and cemeteries, the cosmopolitan streets of Paris, and a masked woman skulking about in a Givenchy gown are just some of the unique visuals that comprise the sordid world of Georges Franju’s classic shocker Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans Visage). Reviled in France upon its initial release, the film remains one of the most notorious, popular and imitated genre entries in the country’s history. To flesh out his adaptation of Jean Redon’s novel, Franju tapped the successful screenwriting team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Les Diaboliques), and to create a nightmarish visual tone, he called upon German cinematographer Eugen Schufftan (The Hustler, Lilith). Schufftan had demonstrated a flair for special-effects photography and had a solid résumé of black-and-white work with such legends as Max Ophuls and G.W. Pabst. 

The Criterion Collection recently released Eyes Without a Face, marking the film’s debut on DVD. The image quality of this high-definition, 16x9-enhanced transfer is generally excellent, with crisp, stark contrasts and a well-reproduced gray scale. The audio track is a clean, monaural presentation that pulses with Maurice Jarre’s creepy musical score.

The supplemental features start with Blood of the Beasts, Franju’s graphic 1949 short that documents the goings-on at a slaughterhouse. Also included is a menu entitled Dr. Genessier’s Clinic, which provides several interesting segments: a five-minute interview with Franju filmed for French television in 1982; a seven-minute excerpt from the 1985 documentary Les Grands-peres du crime, in which Boileau and Narcejac discuss their work; and a gallery of promotional stills, poster art and theatrical trailers for Eyes and its dubbed, U.S.-release version, The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. Also included are printed essays by film historian David Kalat and novelist Patrick McGrath.

With its lyrical imagery and potent shock value, Eyes Without a Face continues to beguile both horror aficionados and casual viewers alike. There’s an otherworldly quality to the proceedings, particularly the images of the masked Christiane as she moves about the prison-like villa, awaiting a new face and slowly descending into madness. With this solid DVD presentation, Franju’s classic tale of eyes — the predatory pair of Louise’s, the mad fury of Dr. Genessier’s, and the desperate pair that gaze out from behind Christiane’s blank, white mask — will continue to haunt audiences as it has since 1959.

— Kenneth Sweeney