Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.
Eyes Without a Face is a singular achievement in horror cinema. Franju's cinematography is hauntingly poetic — the stark black-and-white imagery, the eerily beautiful mask Christiane wears, and the clinical horror of the surgery sequences create an unforgettable visual language that influenced decades of horror. Its novelty is exceptional: it occupies a unique space between Grand Guignol horror and lyrical art cinema, with a dreamlike melancholy wholly its own. The ending, in which Christiane releases the dogs and doves and walks into the night, is genuinely transcendent — one of horror's great closing images. Plot and acting are solid but more conventional; the narrative is relatively straightforward and some performances lean toward melodrama, keeping those categories from reaching the top tier.